


Purgatory

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Blood, Depression, Flashbacks, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Torture, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 20:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: After the attack on his childhood home, after his fall and his rebirth, Vergil had thought he'd already been through the worst parts of his life; that he'd come out victorious and unbreakable.He was wrong.Vergil's own personal hell unfolds in the human realm, in the form of his brother asking Vergil to hurt him.





	Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a quick oneshot. 21k later it's finally ready to post.
> 
> BIG, BIG thanks to [sootandshadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootandshadow/) for beta'ing this and leaving me the most helpful comments. And also thanks to [vorokis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis) for bearing with me sending her angst at 4 am ~~and encouraging me to make it worse~~. 
> 
> And in general: a giant hug to everyone in the spardacest server for being the most encouraging <3 I really would've never written it otherwise.
> 
> If you haven't read the tags yet, _please do so_. This is not a happy fic, even if it doesn't end in tragedy.
> 
>  **edit** : there is now art for this fic!!! The wonderful [Ceri](https://twitter.com/Ceri_Obt/) made it and it's beautiful and you can see it [here](https://twitter.com/Ceri_Obt/status/1151536677963255808), but careful - it spoilers the whole fic!

Vergil wakes up, unsettled, his nails too long and his teeth too sharp in his mouth. He smells blood somewhere, and not just any blood: _Dante’s_.

Vergil’s demon likes it. _Vergil_ likes it. 

He slides out of bed, doesn’t bother finding a shirt, just follows the scent, curious how exactly his twin managed to injure himself at an hour when he usually couldn’t be forced to get up. He finds him downstairs, sitting on the sofa, his head hanging low and his left hand clutching his sword’s blade hard enough to break his skin, blood running from between his fingers. Vergil watches, fascinated, as Dante slides his hand up. More blood flows, but Dante doesn’t seem to care.

“You do realise this is not how one takes care of their sword, devil arm though it may be?” Vergil drawls after a moment. The weapons might thirst for blood, but they certainly do not require it.

Dante startles. He drops his hand at once, his sword disappearing into the ether, and he turns to look in Vergil’s general direction, but avoids meeting his eyes. Vergil raises an eyebrow at him, taking in the way his brother seems to almost shy away; he doesn't exude fear—he never does—but his shoulders are hunched like he's trying to hide, a ridiculous display annoying Vergil's demon. Dante jumps to his feet after a second, his hand closed in a tight fist. Another moment, and he grins and runs his eyes up and down Vergil’s body.

“What, my pyjamas are not cutting it for you?”

He’s dodging the question, clear as day, but Vergil isn’t inclined to press at the moment. He gestures with one clawed finger towards himself, but Dante stills instead of coming to him like he's ordered, and Vergil growls low in his throat.

 _If you want a fight, I’ll give you one_ , he’s promising, _but you spilt your blood all by yourself_.

Dante, predictably, chooses to fight. He shouldn’t have, not like this, when Vergil’s more demon than human and Dante’s own demon is hidden.

Vergil slams Dante into the wall, hard; he can hear a rib cracking. He pins one of Dante’s wrists over his head and curls his fingers around Dante’s bloodied left hand. The cut hasn’t quite healed yet, made as it was with Dante’s own sword, and Vergil doesn’t waste time before bringing Dante’s palm to his lips.

Dante doesn’t struggle as Vergil licks his blood from his fingers. A full demon would care for the _half-human_ aspect of it; Vergil just cares about the taste of Dante, the tingling of his power in his blood, the twisted familiarity of it.

It’s not enough.

He’ll never have enough when it comes to Dante, the part of his soul that resides outside his body and is made all the better for that.

Dante makes a small sound in his throat when Vergil moves upwards and bites his wrist, his fangs easily tearing through human, frail skin so that Dante’s sweet, intoxicating blood flows over his tongue. Vergil could lose himself like this. It’s not inconceivable. It would be a welcome sort of abandon, Dante’s heartbeat in his mouth.

But he’s not one to give up control.

He lifts his head. His form shifts back to fully human.

Dante’s staring at him with half-lidded eyes, his lips parted. The urge to kiss him is always there in the back of Vergil’s mind, stronger now; he doesn’t act on it. Dante _wants_ him to, and that’s a part of why Vergil _won’t_.

Control _is_ important.

He strokes his hand down Dante’s arm, over the rapidly healing wound in his wrist and down to his hand, just to make sure—

There’s a scar there, where his fingers brush Dante’s open palm.

Not a new one, he sees, not a wound Dante’s sword could’ve inflicted. Too thin and precise for that.

Vergil had been bleeding out, already falling into hell when he’d cut through Dante’s hand to stop him following. It was not the kind of wound that should’ve left a permanent scar on Dante. Very few things could. Vergil’s own skin was—

_—cut, cracked, broken, scarred beyond recognition, hurt too much too often too deeply—_

spotless, the way a son of Sparda’s skin should be.

What _has_ Dante done to himself?

“A gentleman would reciprocate,” Dante tells him with a grin too wide for a human, his eyes shining in the dim room.

Vergil scoffs. “If you want something from me, _take it_.”

Dante certainly tries.

***

There is something about Dante here, in the human world, in his _home_ , that was lacking in hell—or maybe it is the other way round.

Hell was easy: kill the demons, fight each other, kill the demons again, an infinite loop. The demons weren’t a challenge, but they were a distraction. Vergil didn’t have to think of the month when he was _human_ (worse still, of the month when he was pure demon). He basked in Dante’s presence and the shared violence between them. He could've stayed in hell with Dante forever, but he understood it wasn't an option for his brother, so when the time came for them to return, he crossed over the portal for Dante.

Vergil is woefully unacquainted with the human world. The nineteen years he’d spent here are a distant and distorted memory save for the moments he’d shared with Dante, forever crystal clear in his mind, but he’d assumed his brother would be at ease here. The only moments Dante is at ease, though, are when they’re fighting, be it each other or the demons that Dante’s paid to hunt. Dante’s eyes are only alive when the Yamato cuts his skin.

 _You try so hard to be human, little brother, but you’re a monster just like me_.

It’s gratifying, in a way.

( _If they’re too demon to live here_ , Vergil wonders at times, and the idea feels alien, not his but V’s, a reminder of why he’d cut that part of himself out, _wouldn’t they be too human to stay in hell?_ )

***

Whatever else can be said about Dante and the human world, he’s certainly good at enjoying its vices.

Vergil winces, setting his glass down. “Disgusting,” he enunciates.

“You’ll get used to it,” Dante answers, leaning back in his chair. He’s foregone a glass, drinking straight from the bottle because manners remain as foreign to him as ever. There’s something off that Vergil can’t quite pinpoint about him. It irks him; he should always be able to understand his twin.

“We can’t get drunk anyway,” Vergil reminds him.

“Never took you for a quitter,” Dante says. Vergil doesn’t move to signal his intent, but Dante still manages to dodge a summoned blade before it can pin his hand to his desk.

“Do as you wish.” Vergil stands up. He gathers his book, a 17th century treaty on demonology that is almost amusing in how wrong it is in its depictions of demons, and almost disconcerting in how accurate it is in its depictions of portals, and heads for the stairs.

He slows down as he passes Dante, that subtle feeling of _wrongness_ flaring up again.

“Want more after all?” Dante asks.

Vergil doesn’t dignify that with an answer.

He doesn’t plan on returning downstairs that night, but a few hours later his senses warn him of danger; he steps down in a flash of blue energy and finds himself staring at a clearly intoxicated Dante. He sees immediately what alerted him, too: a now-broken bottle, pieces of glass still wedged into Dante’s hand.

So not only did he get drunk on human alcohol, he got drunk enough to forget his strength.

Blood usually makes Vergil’s demon interested, but not like that, with the smell of cheap booze permeating the room and Dante’s eyes glossed over.

“Sloppy.” Vergil looks down at him. Dante stares at his own hand for a moment wearing an expression Vergil doesn’t care to analyse. They’re identical, but the mirror that Dante presents is unsettling at times.

“Yeah,” Dante says, his voice dark. “A terrible accident.”

Vergil has little patience for his brother’s antics. “Do clean up by the morning.”

***

A call from Morrison takes them to Timely, a small town to the west that’s barely more than a village. Vergil goes, because accompanying Dante in his work as a petty demon exterminator is at the very least amusing, and doesn’t comment on how close Dante stands to him every time he opens a portal with the Yamato.

They end up in front of a run-down building that might’ve been a warehouse. Vergil can sense the demons inside, maybe two dozen. Easy work, barely worth the trouble of coming here. He’d hoped to be entertained.

Dante looks around. “No humans, but that might just be the weather.”

It is chilly in Timely; not that it bothers either of them, although Dante keeps rubbing his left wrist where tape covers it over his glove.

“Nervous, little brother?”

Dante scoffs. “Bored, more like. Any demons the two of us couldn’t take on?”

Vergil glances sideways at him. “There aren’t any that I alonecouldn’t defeat, but it’s good to hear you admitting your need for assistance.”

Dante flips him off and proceeds to kick the door in. How very subtle.

There’s a nest of furies inside, not enough of them to be a worthy distraction even if Dante weren’t with him. More than enough to kill humans though: the warehouse reeks of old blood.

Vergil unsheathes the Yamato; next to him, the air sizzles with the power of Dante's sword being summoned. The furies, idiotically, think that they can sneak up on them, and they pay for it. Vergil mercilessly cuts them down with the Yamato, laughing in the face of their arm-blades, too weak to even cut through his suddenly scaled skin. Dante likes to play with his prey, but Vergil prefers cold effectiveness, and he rolls his eyes at his brother when he sees him still egging on the last fury, nodding but not attacking. He kills it with a summoned sword and delights at Dante's glare. 

They look at each other. Vergil’s blood is singing in his veins, his demon waiting for the fulfilment of the promise of violence that the lesser demons could never deliver.

Dante’s smile over his raised weapon is feral.

They clash in the middle of the warehouse, the Yamato against King Cerberus because Dante can’t just settle on one Devil Arm. There’s something in the atmosphere that makes Vergil’s senses itch, but he can’t put his finger on it, and whatever faults Dante might have, being a lousy opponent is not one of them. Vergil doesn’t have concentration to spare when they’re fighting.

Which is, frankly, just what he needs.

Dante winces as he parries a blow with his weapon in its staff form, his hands grasping it at both ends. His left hand _shakes_ , and it’s not normal; Vergil isn’t using that much strength and his use of the Yamato relies more on speed anyway. Dante disengages and jumps away. Vergil lets him have a moment to summon his giant, narcissistically named sword, wondering what Dante's problem is, but with his sword held firmly in his right hand, Dante’s finally the worthy opponent that Vergil craved. 

The building around them does not last long, but the walls coming down around them don’t make them stop.

They only pause when the sun rises, both panting; Dante’s left sleeve drenched with blood, Vergil’s hair falling down on his face and his ribs aching as they knit back together after Dante’s kick.

“I’m up one,” Dante says, and Vergil laughs breathlessly as he draws the Yamato again.

A challenge should never go unanswered, after all.

***

Vergil goes out on his own, sometimes, not really interested in the surroundings but in need of fresh air. The Yamato’s reassuring weight at his belt and the smell of clematis permeating the night air are nothing like what his twenty years in hell were, and Vergil appreciates it. He tends to return calmer than when he’d left, but today he tenses again the moment he crosses the threshold of his brother's home.

 _Blood_ , he feels with his more demonic senses, _fresh blood_.

Not all that surprising at Devil May Cry, but hurting Dante requires some skills. Intrigued, Vergil ventures inside. He can’t sense any other demon than the two of them, the fight clearly over. He expects to see broken furniture, but instead the main room isn’t any more of a mess than normally.

Frowning now, Vergil quietly pads upstairs, into Dante’s bedroom.

Dante’s holding a Devil Arm, one that Vergil doesn’t know that manifests as a small dagger. An assassin’s blade, not something that Dante would ever use . . . but there Dante is, sitting on the edge of his bed and slicing his wrist open.

Vergil watches.

One, two, three parallel lines; deep, no hesitation in Dante at all. They heal quickly, and Dante just repeats his movements, harder, three slashes on his wrist, blood staining the floor red. Again.

He’s not performing any ritual. He’s just cutting his wrist, over and over again.

Vergil’s mind scrambles to find an explanation, any explanation that’s not _Dante’s hurting himself because he wants to_ , because they’re demons and it makes zero sense. Even if Dante doesn’t crave power the way Vergil does—did—it doesn’t explain this _._

 _Weak,_ a part of Vergil thinks, _weak and deplorable. A prey animal_.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asks coldly.

Dante’s eyes widen in surprise, which is telling in and of itself. He should always be able to sense Vergil, but he’s let himself become _distracted_.

“Ever learnt how to knock?” Dante asks, voice tense, his knuckles white on the hilt of his dagger. A pathetic knife unworthy of drawing Dante’s blood, that. Few weapons are.

He looks at Dante’s hands and the oozing wounds on his right wrist, Dante’s action repeated enough times that they’re taking a moment to heal. Vergil’s intimately acquainted with that: the limits of their strength and what it takes to break it; how much pain is tolerable and at what point it stays forever, as if carved into his bones.

Dante’s never even approached that limit. Dante probably doesn’t even know it exists. Dante has always had it _easy_.

At the worst of it, Vergil had still been glad it was him and not Dante. That hasn’t changed, but there’s a white cold anger growing in him, eclipsing everything.

“Are you bored?” he sneers at Dante. “Never lost anything, never experienced true suffering, trying to get a taste?”

Dante’s eyes are dark. “Fuck you,” he spits. “You know nothing about me.”

“Should I show you what pain means, little brother?” Vergil moves as he speaks, his hand grabbing at Dante’s throat and pushing him back, pinning him to the mattress. He hovers over him, just enough pressure on Dante’s neck that he can still breathe, a consideration he barely feels like granting him under the circumstances.

Dante’s eyes are terrifying. He should be reacting, he should be sliding into his demon form, but instead he’s looking at Vergil with human eyes, empty like the Underworld’s vast plains. A living being should not look like that.

They stay like that for the space of one heartbeat, and then Dante does fight, a laughable attempt to stab Vergil with the blade stained with his own blood. Vergil lets go of Dante's throat and instead rests his knee on Dante’s abdomen to keep him down, unsheathes the Yamato and parries in one smooth motion, infusing his sword with more energy. Dante’s feeble dagger shatters on impact.

“Were you hiding because you were ashamed, or because you were scared I could do so much worse?” Vergil whispers.

“All bark and no bite, brother?” Dante snarls at him.

Vergil plunges the Yamato into his chest, and then, because he knows his katana is so sharp it can be as painless as it is lethal, twists it.

Dante coughs up blood. His hands go to grasp at the blade; Vergil bats them away.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Dante is still quintessentially _Dante_ , chronically unable to just agree with someone, and he reaches for Vergil’s shoulder. Vergil is expecting to be pushed away—weakly, considering the state Dante’s put himself in—but instead Dante tries to pull him _down_. Vergil freezes, for a second, not sure what Dante’s doing here and unable to look away from him. Vergil’s demon is telling him to slide the Yamato just a bit to the side, puncture Dante’s heart with it and take his life.

Vergil kisses him instead.

He licks Dante’s blood from his lips, marvels again at how Dante can just _waste_ it. Dante’s form changes underneath him, human to less so; he twists the Yamato again as a warning. Vergil’s nails grow into claws that he digs into Dante’s shoulder and drags them all the way down to his waist, slowly slicing three parallel lines into his skin. Dante bucks up, opens his mouth as if to scream and Vergil swallows it into another hard kiss.

He could carve Dante’s heart out like this and Dante would _let_ him. It’s clear in the way he’s not offering any real resistance to Vergil’s ministrations. A part of Vergil rejoices in it, wants to follow through . . . but he doesn’t want Dante’s willing submission. He wants Dante fighting him tooth and nail, the way he’s always done; victory means nothing if Vergil doesn’t _tear_ it from him.

“Your blood is mine to draw, brother,” he promises against Dante’s lips before yanking the Yamato out.

Later he’ll realise that the way Dante relaxed under him at the words, even as his blood oozed from the wound, should have been a warning.

***

Vergil watches Dante carefully the next few days, but his foolish behaviour seems to have been a one-off folly. They take jobs: those that they handle together inevitably end with them fighting and property damage; those that they separate for tend to be dull, if quick.

Dante comes back from one such job to Devil May Cry without a single cut on his body in clothes drenched with blood.

It’s close to 3 AM, but Vergil’s already slept this week and he hardly needs more. (He’s not a lethargic sloth like Dante, napping whenever he manages to sit down—though, come to think of it, Dante’s been sleeping less lately.) Vergil had been meditating, still getting himself accustomed to being in the human world with its atmosphere almost alien to him after so many years, but Dante’s presence as always demands his attention.

“So careless. Did you really let some lesser demons get a hit on you?”

Dante stiffens in the doorway. “Who said it was my blood?”

“You might’ve healed by now, but you forget I can smell you, little brother.” Not all of it is Dante’s, but even one drop would be enough for Vergil to notice. “I suppose the fault is mine; assuming you could’ve dealt with such pests on your own. Do forgive me.”

“Hate to break it to you, bro, but I’ve been in this business longer than you.” Dante shrugs out of his coat as he speaks and actually hangs it. That’s an improvement too, one that Vergil is rather sure is due to Dante finding his beloved coat pinned to the wall with blue summoned swords after he’d tossed it to the ground too many times.

“And all your experience can’t make up for the lack of skills. I am aware.”

Dante flips him off. Vergil merely raises an eyebrow.

Dante looks like he wants to say something else, but ultimately decides against it. Vergil doesn’t ask, although he is kind of curious: this is his brother, usually impossible to shut up. Still, Vergil certainly does not want to encourage his incessant babbling.

His eyes follow Dante as he slowly climbs the stairs.

***

A squadron of Angelo demons materializes before him from a nearby minor hell gate, armoured to the teeth and crackling with vicious purple energy. Vergil inhales. His hand tightens on the Yamato’s grip.

He does _not_ mind fighting these creatures.

There’s no technique in his fighting style for once, no style: just pure strength. They don’t deserve his consideration or an opportunity to experience the Yamato’s elegant power. They must simply be torn apart.

He exhales.

A few seconds pass.

“Vergil?” Dante moves to stand at his side in a blur. He’d been right next to Vergil moments ago; he must’ve stepped away when Vergil attacked. It’s good that he knows not to get in Vergil’s way. They really do complement each other in a fight.

The hell gate is barely more than a rupture. Vergil teleports to it and seals it without a word. Dante follows him again.

“Hey, Ver—”

“I believe our job here is done.” Vergil turns on the spot and starts walking.

“Do you—”

“There is _nothing_ to talk about, Dante.” And if Dante will try to ask again, Vergil will silence him with his blade.

Dante doesn’t try to _talk_. He extends his hand as if to touch him instead, which isn’t any better, and Vergil slices through his palm with the Yamato to keep him away, acting on pure instinct, not really expecting to deter him. Dante steps away from him as if sprayed with holy water, though, his left hand falling to his side like he’s actually hurt—

 _Left hand_.

Memory catches up with Vergil.

“Dante—”

“No worries, brother, got the message. No talking. Sorry. Geez.”

 _Sorry_? From _Dante_?

“Let’s go home, shall we?” Dante’s smile is as wide as it is fake.

 _Home_. The concept of it is lost on Vergil— _it’s Dante_ , a voice like V’s whispers—but the run-down office clearly matters to Dante, so that’s where Vergil will take them. They just need to get further away from where they’re standing right now first. Opening a portal back to Devil May Cry with the Yamato right next to a freshly closed gate would not be ideal.

They walk for half an hour before Vergil deems it safe to cut through the fabric of space. He doesn't say anything and Dante remains equally quiet.

Back at the Devil May Cry, Dante clears off almost immediately, not offering an explanation. Vergil bites on his lip as he watches him leave.

He takes a scalding hot shower, not because a part of him remembers an embrace of a cold suit of armour but because demonic ichor is hard to scrub off. Clean and dried off, Vergil goes to his room, which became theirs after Dante’s mattress got ruined with his own blood and Vergil kissed it from his lips.

They’d had sex a few times since then, an extension of their fights; they never undressed more than necessary and definitely never actually slept next to each other. It’d be . . . too intimate, in Vergil’s mind. Dante might’ve killed some of his nightmares, but he’d never be rid of them all, and Dante does not need to know about that. But as Vergil lies down now, his eyes wide open, he almost hopes for Dante to come back, crawl next to him, _sleep_.

Foolish dreams. He should be better than that.

Dante’s return, much later, is a loud, pathetic affair. He stumbles through the front door smelling like a brewery, only just able to walk but not able to manoeuvre around his furniture, as evidenced by the noise of chairs getting knocked aside and Dante’s swearing. Vergil, who was not waiting for his return, goes downstairs and frowns at him. There’s more than just alcohol: Dante’s hand is still bleeding, too.

“Brother,” he says, carefully.

Dante rounds up on him. “Now you want to talk?” His speech is badly slurred. “Let’s talk!”

Vergil considers knocking him out to let him sleep it off.

Dante staggers, catches himself on one sofa, and continues towards Vergil. “Let’s talk about how you fell,brother.”

Vergil looks at him impassively. “I doubt this is a conversation you would want to have in this state.”

“Like it’s a conversation _you’d_ ever want to have.”

He might be completely intoxicated, but he does have a point. Talking is one of those human things that Vergil does not understand. What is the point of describing the events they both are aware of?

Dante makes it across the room, finally, and jabs his fingers into Vergil’s chest. This close, Vergil can pinpoint the source of Dante’s blood: his palm, yes, but not the slice he’d made with the Yamato. Instead it’s many smaller cuts, as if he’d crushed a bottle in his naked palm again. There’s something off about his wrist, too, and Vergil tilts his head as he catches Dante’s hand in his.

Dante tries to push him away. It’s laughable.

“Let’s talk,” Dante repeats, set on it in his drunken daze. “Let’s talk about how I killed you.”

Vergil freezes.

“How I killed you and I _didn’t even know_.” Dante’s voice breaks. He blinks, and tears run down his face.

Vergil’s demon wants to lick them. Use this weakness and put Dante in his place and—

Vergil stomps down on that urge even if giving in seems preferable to _answering_. “Would you rather I—” He curses himself as he stumbles on his own words, hates how weak he must sound as he finishes the question, “Nelo Angelo killed you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Dante snarls in his face, and Vergil can’t reply, can’t react, can’t think even, because Dante finally passes out.

Vergil catches him before he can hit the floor; it’s reflex, nothing else. He carries him up and deposits him on the bed. Like this, with all that energy making him seem bigger-than-life, Dante looks pale and exhausted; in need of protection. Vergil is with him now, though, and he won't fail in his duties as Dante's big brother this time.

He snatches his hand away before he can push Dante’s hair out of his face.

Even unconscious, Dante doesn’t look like he’s at peace.

***

Vergil knows the exact moment Dante wakes up, his senses prickling at the aura of another powerful demon so close to himself. He knows his brother will be completely sober, thanks to their demonic heritage, but he has no intention of talking to him. His drunk confessions are better left forgotten.

Why would _Dante_ feel guilty, anyway? It’s Vergil who was too weak, who allowed himself to get corrupted, who almost murdered his twin without even realising it.

Upstairs, the floor creaks, and then the pipes rattle with a sudden surge of water, Dante no doubt starting his much-needed shower. Vergil’s eyes unconsciously track the path of the sounds along the ceiling, before he gives himself a mental shake and forces himself to focus on his reading. He’s switched from texts on demonology—it’s hard finding something he doesn’t already know, both from his previous research or his years in hell—to more of an uncharted territory to him: historical texts on the human realm. If he’s to live here, he may as well learn all there is to know about it.

But then there is _something_ , a spike across his senses reminiscent of a battle, and Vergil heads up with resignation. He lets himself into the bathroom—not like Dante has any modesty, not like Vergil would care anyway—and immediately sees what tripped his senses.

At the first sight, it looks just like a stud bracelet: black leather, sharp metallic spikes. A piece of jewellery one might wear to appear dangerous.

It’s not.

The spikes are _too_ sharp, narrow, made from silver and not iron. The fastening is all wrong, making them face inside rather than outwards.

Vergil knows what it is, because he recognises the design even if the size is smaller. For a few moments he just stands there, completely still, because he’s learnt that every minute movement will make the spikes plunged into his body hurt more, tear through his tissue and spread their poison. This is his master's punishment for disappointing him, and Nelo Angelo has to bear it with grace, lest he wants it to last, and so he doesn't even let himself breathe—

It’s unnecessary. He’s safe. Has been for a while. He unclenches his hands from the door, noticing he's cracked the frame, and consciously makes his body relax.

Now that he's back in the here and now, he realises Dante’s been speaking, his voice annoyed.

Vergil opens the shower curtain without any preamble. Dante’s washing his hair as he’s complaining, but Vergil unceremoniously catches him by his left wrist and pulls closer, heedless of getting wet himself in the process. If Dante _really_ —

There it is: a band of even, round scars around Dante’s wrist; right where the tapes he wears would hide it from view.

Vergil remembers Dante rubbing at his wrist; his grip on King Cerberus too weak; the _wrong_ sensation as he passed Dante and couldn’t sense any injury even though everything screamed at him . . .

“ _Why_ ,” Vergil grits out. He can hear his own voice reverberating with the inhuman notes of his demonic self.

Dante tries to wrestle his arm free; Vergil just squeezes it hard enough his bones crack—

And he lets go, suddenly unsure how to handle his brother.

Dante clearly didn’t expect it. Free of Vergil’s grasp, he stumbles back and slides on the wet shower tiles. He barely catches himself in time with a hand on the wall.

“Can’t a guy have any privacy anymore?” he asks.

Vergil hisses, his nails extending into claws in his anger. Dante shifts into a defensive stance, which looks ridiculous considering he still has shampoo in his hair. Vergil’s demon doesn’t care: he doesn’t understand Dante, and he wants to beat the foolish behaviour out of him.

And yet. There is a part of Vergil scared, no, terrified at the thought of touching his brother after witnessing what he's been doing to himself.

What is wrong with Dante?

Is it his human half, a source of weakness that Vergil has always known it to be? Is it the demon one, with all his instincts twisted around?

Vergil does not mind pain per se. He understands battle: the respect for one’s opponent, the readiness to bear any wounds they might deal. He understands sex and the willing submission to another or at least the _possibility_ of it: baring one’s throat for one’s equal is something a demon can accept ( _Dante_ , Vergil thinks, _for Dante_ _he might do it_ , _Dante’s the only one who matches and completes him_ ).

Whatever Dante is doing is neither of those. 

Vergil cannot call it anything but a self-inflicted torture. It maddens him. It makes him feel out of control.

“Why?” he repeats.

Dante shrugs, insouciant. “Maybe I just like it,” he drawls. “It’s not any of your business anyway.”

“You’re _mine_ ,” Vergil snarls.

“That why you left me?” Dante pulls himself up. “The water’s getting cold, Verge, so if you don’t mind—” He steps under the water from the overhead shower again, lets it wash away the shampoo, like Vergil’s presence doesn’t matter at all.

Vergil can’t even get annoyed at being ignored right now, still processing Dante’s words. He hadn’t thought of it as _leaving_ Dante. He’d known he couldn’t stay with him in the human world and even more than that, when Dante had reached for him, he’d known Dante couldn’t stay with him in the demon world. His brother was too human for the underworld; not ready to face its monsters. He’d made the only decision he could’ve had, under the circumstances, to protect Dante.

“I didn’t think you’d care,” he settles on saying.

Dante’s laugh is a brittle thing. “Of course you didn’t. When do _you_ ever care about someone other than yourself?” he asks. He stands there, unabashed in his nakedness, water streaming down his body, and Vergil wants to shove him to his knees and carve his name into his skin and make him _listen_.

If only he could find the way to say it, to express the well of emotions that he can’t identify within himself.

His eyes flicker to Dante’s wrist again. “I care about that,” he says, trying the weight of the words on his tongue, hearing his own voice but feeling like someone else is speaking. V, perhaps, or another part of Vergil buried even deeper down.

“Well, don’t,” Dante snaps.

“If that’s what you wish, brother,” Vergil grits out. He leaves, because if he doesn’t it will escalate to violence and he isn’t sure that’s a good idea at the moment; he grabs the damn bracelet on the way out.

***

He shreds the bracelet, of course, but it’s not enough. He wants to kill something. He tries to remember the list of places where the veil between the human and the demon world is thin: he’d catalogued them, over twenty years ago, and the memories are distant, but his recollection is good enough.

He goes through the frozen mountains in Iceland and the barren, scorched land of Sahara before finding what he’s looking for in a castle in Central Europe. It’s positively crawling with demons, and he lets enough of his aura flash so that they’ll come to him. He’s not in the mood to stalk through innumerable chambers to get to his prey. Using himself as bait will work better.

He doesn’t have to wait. Hordes of lesser demons swarm him like they stand a chance of scratching his clothes, let alone killing him to devour his power. There’s no challenge in striking them down.

There’s no challenge in fighting anyone but Dante, but he isn’t going to waste his time thinking about his brother.

He kills them all: furies, empusas, behemoths. The shadows grow longer until the sun sets, but the night doesn’t bring more demons. He reaches out with his senses and there’s nothing for miles but himself.

The desire to pin Dante to the wall with the Yamato and leave him there where Vergil can watch his every move has lessened somehow, so he decides that he might return to Devil May Cry.

The scent of Dante’s blood assaults him when he steps out of the portal. He should’ve expected it, he thinks numbly, but instead it’s like a slap to the face. He doesn’t even have to look for Dante. His brother is right there, in the front room where anyone can just walk in and see him sprawled on the floor, his back against his desk—and a pool of his own blood slowly growing around him. He didn’t take his shirt off and now it’s in tatters, barely serving to cover parts of his skin anymore. Judging by the way it’s ruined, he’d made cuts all over his body, though they’ve long since healed by now. He must’ve focused his _efforts_ on his left arm, it’s the only thing that’s still a mess full of sluggishly bleeding cuts.

His tool of choice is the final insult, an elegant sapphire and gold wakizashi. The Yamato is incomparable, naturally, but Vergil couldn’t blame someone for thinking they had been meant to be a matched set before the true, lethal beauty of the Yamato became apparent. It is no coincidence which of his many Devil Arms Dante chose now.

He looks up at Vergil, his expression challenging.

Vergil could shatter this blade too. Could go through all of Dante’s weapons and destroy them all, one after another, but that would still leave Dante with his eponymous blade, and that’s—

—the Yamato _broke_ and Vergil howled like it was his heart cut in half instead, and it would have hurt less if it were, and he kept screaming until his voice gave up, not _the Yamato, not_ —

It was inconceivable, to take the warrior’s true weapon.

Vergil makes himself step forward. He’s just killed a multitude of demons and, weak as they might’ve been, his blood is still buzzing with the violence and the fight. Dante is practically defenceless in front of him, a perfect predator reduced to _this_.

 _Strike him down while he’s weakened_ , Vergil’s demon demands, and Vergil wraps himself in layers and layers of self-control before he kneels in front of Dante.

He runs his fingers down Dante’s ruined arm, coats them in his blood, tries not to feel as powerless as he did as an eight-year-old kid with a sword bigger than himself. It always comes back to power in the end, he thinks bitterly, and then he realises, _oh_ , there is something he could do.

Closing his hand around Dante’s wrist, he leans in and whispers, in a low, dangerous voice, “If you don’t stop, I will leave you.”

And Dante, his sweet little brother whom Vergil was supposed to _protect_ , smiles up at him. “Sure,” he says, and he reaches to Vergil’s side with his right hand and closes his hand around the Yamato’s hilt.

It takes all of Vergil’s willpower not to cut him for daring to do so, but that’s the problem here, he _can’t_ hurt Dante again, maybe not ever; and Dante’s smile is eerie next to his eyes, windows into an infinite void.

“But why not make it quicker, brother?” Dante asks, and Vergil feels like time’s frozen around him, utterly and completely unable to move as Dante draws his blade and pushes it against his own chest. “Here. It’ll be barely a moment, and then you’ll be free of me forever. Isn’t that what you always wanted? For me to never have existed?”

His face is open. Trusting. _Hopeful_.

Vergil recoils.

The Yamato drops to the ground and he immediately reaches for it on instinct—the Yamato had always kept him anchored—like a weapon of all things can help him here. He keeps his eyes on Dante, the way he’s just slumped there, not moving now that he’s made his point, and he hates it. Hates that his brother can defeat him even like that. Hates how out of control he is. Hates how there is exactly nothing that he can do.

He couldn’t save their mother when they were kids, and he can’t save Dante now.

Vergil stands up. His clothes are ruined with Dante’s blood. 

He wants to walk out. He wants to erase the image of Dante like that from his memory. He wants to know what’s possessing Dante to act like this. He wants, as usual, many different things that he has no hope of ever getting.

He should’ve gotten used to the constant feeling of disappointment that is his life.

“It would’ve been better, wouldn’t it, if Nero hadn’t stopped us,” he says, and _now_ Dante reacts, looking up at him with something akin to horror.

“I couldn’t have killed you again,” Dante lets out.

Vergil decides to be merciful this time and so he doesn’t say that it would’ve been preferable to seeing Dante spill his own blood like it’s nothing.

***

The blood is gone in the morning, but Vergil’s recollection of the scene is still perfect. It doesn’t surprise him. His memories have always been sullied by bitterness and misery; pain etched into his bones while images of a better time slip through his fingers like grains of sand. He’s not sure he remembers his mother’s true voice anymore; not after facing one too many of Mundus’ carefully crafted facsimiles, their likeness to the original ripped straight from Vergil’s mind and yet _warped_. He remembers exactly what she looked like torn apart by demons, down to every cut and broken bone. He’d learnt early on in life that any happiness is fleeting; the tragedies stay forever.

Even if he somehow could forget the sight of his brother’s intended self-flagellation in the space of barely a few hours, the scent remains, putting him on edge.

The human currently sitting on one of Dante’s sofas doesn’t seem to notice, but it would be more suspicious if he did, with his inadequate senses only alerting him to the most obvious dangers—and not even that, really. He keeps throwing terrified looks in Vergil’s direction, but somehow seems to believe that Dante is _safe_.

“They’re ruining my crops, and I need help,” the human says.

“Enough,” Vergil speaks. “Find someone else to deal with your pest infestation.”

“Pest—they’re—”

“Empusas, by the sound of it, not worth the effort—”

Dante interrupts. “What my brother is trying to say—”

Vergil doesn’t look at him. “Is to bother another hunter.” He’s tired of playing this game. He doesn’t transform, but he lets some of his demonic aura escape his control; just enough to trigger the fight or flight response in their would-be client.

Weak, but not a complete moron: the man all but runs out of the office.

“ _Vergil_.”

Vergil finally turns to his brother. He carefully avoided facing him when he’d first entered the room, hearing a new voice; now he has no choice but to look.

Dante is a mess.

There are dark circles under his eyes that Vergil recognises from the mirror, but which should never find place on his brother’s face. After their return from the Underworld, he tended to shave regularly, but today his stubble is unkempt. He changed his clothes, at least, but he hardly had a choice if he didn’t want any humans to run away at the sight of him.

That part was unexpected, Vergil has to admit. He was prepared to find Dante passed out in the morning, not sitting behind his desk like things were _normal_. 

“Vergil,” Dante repeats. “What the fuck was that?”

“I do believe I should be the one asking that, brother.” Vergil comes to stand next to Dante’s desk. His fingers itch for the Yamato, but for the first time ever, he is devoid of violence as a means of dealing with his brother.

There is a simple solution. He _should_ leave. His presence here clearly isn’t beneficial to Dante in any way. He should ignore what Dante told him and he should go away—

_And return to find his brother’s dead body?_

Whatever happens to Dante is Vergil’s responsibility. He’d tear apart anyone who dares to lay a finger on his brother, but what does he do if it’s Dante himself?

“You will cease this madness,” Vergil enunciates.

Dante raises an eyebrow at him. “Glad to be on the same page. That was a perfectly fine job you refused and that _is_ madness. No more of that, bro.” 

Vergil grits his teeth. “Is that why you chose this job?”

“I help humans and get money for pizza. Seems like a good deal.”

Vergil has the Yamato half out of his sheath before he realises what Dante’s doing.

“Oh, come on,” Dante says. He gets up, his sword materialising in his grasp. “Like we can go a day without fighting. Don't hold back.”

Vergil parries without drawing his blade. The strength of Dante’s hit sends him a few metres back. They have an unspoken rule not to fight inside the building, but Dante seems to be beyond that now.

Vergil dodges the next hit; reflects Dante’s spectral swords with his own, never aims at Dante. It’s not hard. Dante’s usual fighting method is only chaotic if one doesn’t know him: Dante plans on the fly, always, but there’s a method to it. He’s good at constructing strategies in a split second.

That’s not what he’s doing now. What he’s doing now is pure chaos with no order to it at all.

“Fight me,” he snarls.

Vergil keeps the Yamato sheathed at his side, his grip hard enough his knuckles go white. “So that you can treat it like another one of your little self-harm exercises?” he asks in a voice like ice. “I don’t think so.”

Dante charges him, but his movements are uncoordinated and his eyes wild. Dodging his hits is child’s play. It shouldn’t be like this. Dante’s a formidable opponent. To see him reduced to this is unendurable.

“If you wish to fight me, brother,” Vergil says, “You need to try harder than that. You need to give me a _reason_ , because I am not going to let you use me to hurt you. I am no one’s puppet.” _Not ever again_.

Dante smiles at him viciously. “I liked you better when you were. Didn’t have to convince you to fight.”

In an explosion of blue energy, Vergil pushes Dante against the wall, the Yamato pressed flat against his throat, his tail wrapped around Dante’s legs to keep him immobile.

 _Kill him_ , the demon that Vergil let out demands.

But Dante doesn’t look terrified of Vergil. The horror in his eyes is turned at himself.

 _Doesn’t matter. Kill him_.

Vergil’s hand is resting on Dante’s face, his claws against the soft flesh of his cheeks. It’d be so easy to crush his head. Cutting his jugular with the Yamato would be more natural than breathing. It wouldn’t be any effort at all to pierce his heart with a summoned sword.

Slowly, carefully, he shifts his form back to human. He sheathes the Yamato. He steps away from Dante.

Every atom of his being vibrates with the desire to hurt Dante, but _not on his terms_.

Vergil throws him one last, long look—and he leaves.

***

He wraps his aura tight around himself, close like a second skin, until even Dante would be unable to sense him if he didn't look straight at him. It’s a simple enough skill, one he'd mastered as a child to assure his own survival. He opts to hold the Yamato in his hand instead of tying it at his waist. The katana is a familiar, welcome weight anchoring him in the here and now instead of letting him roam the dark realm of his past.

He can go anywhere in the human world, and if he didn't care about opening a new hell gate, anywhere in the underworld too. Distance is never a problem for him and vacillation isn’t in his nature, and yet, as he walks down the street away from the Devil May Cry, he finds out he doesn’t know where to head to. Another thing that was easier in hell: in a place with no good destinations, one did not have to worry about choices—

Or at least, Vergil didn’t when he was there with Dante. He’d made all the wrong choices when he’d let himself fall at nineteen years old; hadn’t gotten a chance to actually decide anything else for himself in a decade.

He runs his thumb around the Yamato’s tsuba.

He settles on walking aimlessly around, the town still unfamiliar to him after he’s spent more than a month there. He knows all the streets, of course, all the narrow passes and wide alleys—the familiarity with one's terrain is absolutely imperative under any circumstances—but it's a dry sort of knowledge, devoid of any emotional links to the places around him. Red Grave would have been different, but he would never willingly move there again, even if he hadn't razed it to the ground.

Ultimately, he is where he is because it's Dante's home, but that doesn't seem to mean much.

He frowns with disdain as he passes by Dante's favourite bar, but after a moment of hesitation, he decides to enter it. Let's try it his brother's way for once, shall he? After all, Dante certainly seems to have everything under control.

It's not what Vergil would have expected if he ever deigned to imagine the place. It looks nicer than Dante's state after returning from it suggested: clean, with an array of four-person tables, a tulip on every one. He's one step in when a human female looks up from where she's setting the glasses at the bar.

“We don't open before—”

Vergil raises one elegant eyebrow.

There's a moment; she reaches to her left, whether for a weapon or to call for help, he's not sure.

“I would merely like to drink,” he says, calmly menacing. Having to step around her dead body to pour it himself would be inconvenient.

She hesitates some more and he grows impatient. Finally, she tilts her head, as if in recognition. “Is Dante—”

He refuses to react at the name even as a wave of anger rolls over him at hearing it. Instead he walks to a table in the corner where he can sit with his back to the wall and observe the front entry.

“My brother, indeed,” he speaks. “I would have what he normally does.”

Dante clearly had years of experience in testing whatever alcohol is strong enough to work on their half-demon bodies, so why shouldn’t Vergil use his knowledge?

She brings him a full bottle of Everclear, which Vergil recognises from the shelves at the Devil May Cry, and leaves it there.

“Are there no glasses in this fine establishment?” he asks before he realises what it means about Dante’s drinking habits. It is one thing for Dante to drink straight from the bottle at home; quite another here, where everyone can see him. Then again: it’s Dante. Of course he doesn’t care.

He nods his thanks when she gives him one, and then she hides back behind the counter, her fear strong in the air. Luckily for her, Vergil’s demon still burns with a demand for Dante’s blood, and isn’t interested in a mere human.

The taste is abhorrent, worse than the whiskey he tried at Dante’s behest; he ignores it and downs the rest of his glass in one go. It sits in his belly like liquid fire, but it doesn’t help the mess of emotions running around his head, the memories that he barely manages to push away.

Dante had killed his nightmares, and so Vergil doesn’t remember the worst of it. He does remember Dante running his blade through his chest and the brief, exhilarating moment of being _free_ —before he ceased to be at all.

Another glass.

He remembers enough to dread wondering about what he forgot, and he hates his own weakness for it. Power is everything, and knowledge is power. Once upon a time, Vergil had known exactly who he was and his place in the world. His identity had been torn out of him, cut out over and over again until it was lost forever; his place had been remade into one of subservience until he _longed_ to kneel before Mundus. He remembers his _acceptance_ of Nelo Angelo’s armour; he doesn’t remember what brought it on. Maybe he was weak. Maybe he just wanted the torture to end. He remembers enough of it that it seems like a possibility, and he hates himself for that, too. Discarding his memories had been a mistake born out of fear, and now he will never again know what kind of a demon or man he was; who he is now.

Another glass, and another, and—

His bottle is empty, like it’s mocking him.

Rage blooms within him; he stops himself from shattering it in the last moment. That is what Dante does, and he is nothing like Dante.

He calls the waitress. She sets two more bottles on his table.

Another glass, then.

Being V brought him nothing but painful realisations and emotions he never wanted. Being Urizen, being a demon fuelled by wrath, wasn’t so different to being locked in a black armour with all his feelings ripped out of his very soul, leaving only the anger that his master could redirect as he pleased. As a human, Vergil manipulated Dante to try and fix what he’d done wrong; as a demon, he’d done to Dante’s friends exactly what had been done to him, taking his cues from Mundus in the treatment of the enemies who were beneath him.

Vergil drinks.

At some point, it helps. The memories don’t stop, but there’s a filter over them, dulling the sharp edges enough that he stops cutting himself on them. His body feels alien, too, and although there isn’t anything anywhere nearby—or on the planet—that would be a threat to him, he feels uneasy at how much focus it suddenly takes to make sure he doesn’t spill his drink.

He deems it enough when he finds the third bottle empty. Dante would keep going, and Vergil is not Dante.

He leaves money on the table and he gets up to leave. There are other people in the bar now, couples or groups of friends that he watched come in, all of them harmless. They carefully avoid looking at him as he walks out, pale and terrified, gripping at each other’s arms; it’s only as he goes out to the street that he realises that somewhere between finishing the last glass and getting up, he’s let his aura out again.

A pathetic mistake that, years ago, could’ve gotten him killed. It doesn’t really matter now, other than for his desire to keep Dante unaware of his position.

It’s raining outside, the sky so heavily clouded that he can’t guess what time it is. His coat is waterproof, but the rain makes his hair fall down his face, sticking to his forehead in wet strands. The water sneaks underneath his collar, drenching his vest. His vision is blurred and he blinks to clear his eyes of rain, irritated when it doesn’t really help. Walking in a straight line somehow turns into a challenge, as does keeping upright. Shudders threaten to rack his body, but that’s only to be expected with how cold it’s suddenly gotten. He’s got the weird urge to hug the Yamato to his body the way he did when he was a child and he pushes it away. He’s not a powerless boy anymore. He’s fine, as always, and there isn’t any demon that he couldn’t slay.

( _There's Dante, half-sitting, half-lying, his blood on the floor and his own hand wielding the blade slicing his veins._ )

It’s only raining, and yet he tastes salt on his tongue from the water on his lips.

A weird aftertaste, nothing else.

He walks until most of the alcohol clears out of his bloodstream, and then he decides it’s time to go back to the Devil May Cry; he’s not a coward.

A part of him wants to leave, actually leave and never return, but Dante carries the other part of his soul: Vergil can no more survive without him than V could without Urizen.

***

Vergil had foolishly thought he’d prepared himself to find Dante in any state once he returned, but his brother proved him wrong. There’s not a lot of blood, this time; Dante’s sitting on the sofa, holding his sword in his right hand, and it’s only his left palm that’s bleeding now; the scene almost exactly the same as the first time Vergil walked in on Dante hurting himself and failed to grasp what it was that his brother was truly doing.

Back then, Dante still acted like Dante, though; he reacted to Vergil. He doesn’t now. He just keeps staring at his blade, a distressing, contemplative look in his eyes as he slices his palm open over and over as if to confirm the sharpness of his weapon.

“I’m here, brother.” Exhaustion overcomes Vergil as he walks to Dante, shrugging off his wet coat without care for where it falls. He’s aware he must reek of alcohol, but Dante doesn’t even look at him, much less comment on his state.

Dante doesn’t stop his repetitive movements, doesn’t raise his head until Vergil gently, too gently, catches his hand and pries his sword out of his grasp to set it aside.

Only then does Dante notice him, his eyes wide in his face. “Vergil?”

“I’m here,” Vergil repeats, wrapping his fingers around Dante’s wrist. “I’m not leaving.”

“I—”

Vergil doesn’t know what Dante wants to say: that he didn’t mean it, before, or that he doesn’t believe Vergil, now. One would be a lie, and the other Vergil doesn’t want to hear, so he speaks over him, quiet and resigned and one hundred percent serious. “I will never leave you again.”

Maybe it’s the promise that Dante needs. Maybe it’ll be enough to stop him, now and forever; return Vergil’s little brother to him in place of this shadow.

Dante stands, and slowly, so very slowly, wraps his arms around Vergil. Vergil stiffens at being held like that, his arms pressed to his body, effectively immobilised if only Dante exerted more strength, but he forces himself to relax and let Dante have this moment. His little brother needs him, and Vergil doesn’t know how to tell him _no_ when it comes down to it.

Dante shakes, ever so slightly. “You’re here,” he says in a rough voice. “You’re here, and I—I—”

Vergil merely nods. His face is still wet from the rain, but Dante cries against his body in a series of heart-wrenching sobs, and Vergil frees his hands to wrap them around Dante and hold him upright.

If he has to be strong for Dante, then so be it.

It’s a long, timeless moment before Dante calms down enough to stand on his own. He wipes at his face with his sleeve before looking at Vergil. Something passes over his face like shame, or maybe guilt; Vergil isn’t good enough with human emotions to decipher it.

Then Dante’s turning him around, pushing Vergil to sit and kneeling between his legs in a set of smooth movements as if in a fight.

“Let me make you feel good,” he says and if Vergil can’t read his face, well, at least his meaning can’t be mistaken.

This isn’t how they do it. They fight, and then sometimes they fuck, or maybe it’s past tense now because Vergil is not going to raise his blade against his brother’s again any time soon, if ever. They’re not . . . gentle. The air would smell of their blood because they drew it fair and square, not because Dante got it in his head to hurt himself.

But Dante’s already leaning in to nuzzle at Vergil, his eyes growing darker, a wave of desire emanating from his body, and so Vergil just nods. He tangles his hand in Dante’s hair but never pulls, and he keeps his demon in check, and _oh_ , Dante is very skilled at this.

Vergil returns the favour in the shower, and then they lie in their bed together for the first time. Dante drifts off to sleep in Vergil’s arms, and Vergil lets himself hope that maybe they’ll be all right, now that they’d hit the rock bottom and started climbing up.

***

The day is good.

There are no clients, but they sit together in the main office of Devil May Cry, and for once Dante isn't hiding behind his desk. He's leaning against Vergil, reading over his shoulder; Vergil makes sure to only turn the pages when Dante’s also done. It’s a quiet, almost domestic moment that’s so novel to Vergil that it feels like a dream.

Dante’s wrists are covered again, but Vergil’s watched him all day; he knows he’s not hiding new scars.

“I’m hungry,” Dante declares when the chapter ends. Vergil’s just surprised he didn’t offer a running commentary, seeing how the tome in his lap is a fairly detailed compendium of fire demons; something Vergil chose to read with Dante at his side as he doesn’t care for disclosing his blooming interest in the human world.

Still . . . He walked through the town he lives in just yesterday and couldn’t find any place that he’d have an emotional connection to; maybe it’s time he changed that.

“Why don’t we go somewhere?” he asks, closing the book. “Show me your favourite place here.”

Dante gives him a look. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

“Can’t I inquire about my little brother’s likes?”

“Sure, to then wrinkle your nose because pizza is beneath you.” Dante shrugs. “But why not? I have an idea.”

Vergil tilts his head questioningly, but Dante just shakes his head. “It’s a surprise,” he insists.

This time, they leave the building together, stepping out into a sunny afternoon that couldn’t be more different to yesterday. Dante walks at Vergil’s side, talking all the while, and there’s a kind of a quiet calm settled over Vergil, like he finally can breathe again after a time of drowning.

All in all, it rather feels like a dream; the Yamato’s steady presence next to him is his only reassurance that it is not.

They stop in front of a diner and Dante opens the door for Vergil with a little bow. A woman on roller skates glides to them and grins at Dante. “We were getting worried!”

“You know me better than that, Cindy.” Dante grins at her. “I’ll have the usual . . . and your special dessert for my brother.”

Vergil raises an eyebrow. “Can I at least know what it is you’re ordering for me?” he asks, amused.

“Where’s the fun in that, Verge?”

They sit in a booth opposite each other. Dante falls quiet; he just looks at Vergil with an unnerving intensity, as if scared of looking away. Now that he’s not acting for the waitress’s benefit, his smile seems dangerously brittle and his eyes dark.

Vergil frowns, debating what to say, when the woman—Cindy, Dante said?—arrives with two plates in her hands. One, she sets in front of Dante. Vergil recognises his brother’s favourite strawberry sundae.

The other, meant for Vergil, is a chocolate cake.

He swallows against the tightness in his throat. “Desserts for lunch, brother?”

“Not sure we can die of malnutrition. _And_ it’s good.” The shadow is gone from Dante’s eyes; he’s just gesturing at Vergil’s plate expectantly.

Vergil hasn’t had chocolate cake since he was eight years old.

He tries it, almost timid, just a small chunk at first. Taste explodes on his tongue, wonderfully sweet and just moist enough. He swallows it at last and can’t help the smile spreading on his lips as he looks over at Dante.

The cake is nothing short of exquisite, but it’s the sight of his brother, enjoying his own dessert, looking alive for a change, that Vergil really enjoys here.

They head back home, later, still together; there are clouds in the sky now, but the rain doesn’t fall until they’re inside.

Vergil doesn’t know why it’s such a relief.

***

Dante steers him to bed again that night even though neither of them needs the sleep; Vergil decides not to protest. It’s a new, untested thing between them, but he doesn’t mind it one bit. He falls asleep in Dante’s arms, his own hand grasping at his brother’s; Dante’s warmth makes him feel safe.

In his dream, he falls.

He falls because he wants to know his father’s home; he falls because it’s the way to keep Dante safe. He falls, pushing away the one person that means the most to him.

He falls, and he gets up, he gets up after every attack Mundus levels at him, he gets up with the Yamato’s broken blade piercing his gut, he gets up, _I can still fight_ like a mantra on his lips; he gets up until he doesn’t.

He kills for his master, his best, invincible servant, and it’s not until a white-haired _human_ attacks that he learns of defeat. He kneels in front of his master, awaiting his punishment, and his god looks down upon him.

_Can’t you still fight, my knight? Isn’t that what you always promised?_

He bows his head; he goes after the white-haired hunter again.

In his dream, Dante doesn’t kill him. In his dream, Dante bleeds out impaled on a broadsword that Vergil had never wanted to wield.

Someone’s shaking him.

Vergil opens his eyes, but his heart is beating too fast and his breath is coming too short; he strikes out before he can even register what’s happening.

Warm blood falls on his face. Dante’s blood.

Vergil grows very still.

“Dante,” he realises, and then he’s reaching for him in horror, half of his mind still caught up in the nightmare as he presses his hand to Dante’s chest and expects to find a gaping wound in place of his heart.

He doesn’t. His brother is fine; the scratch wasn’t deep and it’s healing already. He looks at Vergil, his hand still on Vergil’s shoulder, his face worried. Like he doesn’t blame Vergil for attacking him like that when Dante wanted to help.

“You had a nightmare,” Dante says.

“A most accurate observation,” Vergil says. “You shouldn’t have woken me up.”

“Yeah, nothing says having a good night’s sleep like letting your twin suffer,” Dante snorts. He grows serious. “What was it? I thought . . .”

Vergil inhales. He lets himself run his hand, fully human now, down Dante’s chest, smearing the blood around as his fingers prove to him that yes, Dante has completely healed by now. He’s all right.

 _All right_ ; as if Vergil hadn’t vowed to never hurt his brother again and then proceeded to do just that while half-asleep.

He inhales and exhales. “Nothing.”

“Vergil—” Dante bites on his lip. “You were talking.”

Vergil’s blood runs cold.

“It was Mundus, wasn’t it?”

He desperately wants to deny, but he’s still too shaken to think of any lie Dante would accept. He stays quiet, his hand splayed over Dante’s heart. He doesn’t sleep again, and Dante doesn’t move until the first rays of sunlight make their way into the room.

***

Vergil is on edge all day. Tightly-controlled desire for a fight is curled underneath his skin, ready to slip out and pounce on the nearest person—on _Dante_ , because he is the only one who could provide Vergil with some measure of entertainment and the one whose blood Vergil longs for, having woken up the way he did.

Contrary to Dante, Vergil has always known and accepted exactly what he is, but he won’t let his demonic urges control him. Dante’s off-limits; has made himself off-limits, and that’s the way it’ll be now.

He wonders if Dante’s feeling the same urge for blood and he knows the answer is _yes_.

He’s hyperaware of his brother’s movements, shuffling about on the second floor; he’s not sure exactly what he’s doing there but he’s just glad Dante isn’t napping or staring blindly into space again. Vergil might be all but vibrating with barely-contained violence, but the relief he feels at maybe, miraculously, having his little brother actually back is much stronger than that.

Maybe this naïve, pathetic belief is why he doesn’t react immediately.

It wouldn’t have changed anything either way. He can’t foresee the future; he couldn’t have teleported to Dante’s side in time to _stop him_.

He’s upstairs, holding the Yamato, almost half a minute after his senses alert him to blood; Dante’s holding the wakizashi again, and he’s cut through his own chest. Horrified, Vergil realises the shape is similar to that which his claws had gouged at night.

Dante looks at him, silent.

“ _Dante_.”

 _You were supposed to be better_ , Vergil doesn’t say, too late understanding that he’d been delusional to think even for a second that Dante would stop.

“Brother,” Dante says. “I . . .”

“You what, Dante?” Vergil asks in a deceptively calm voice.

Dante meets his eyes. “Isn’t it what I deserve?”

 _Deserve_? That’s—Vergil won’t even consider that craziness. If Dante won’t desist on his own, Vergil will _make him_. He draws the Yamato. He pretends he doesn’t see Dante turn almost _hopeful_.

“Let’s see how you like it, then,” he drawls, still in a light voice, and then he slashes through his forearm, elbow to palm, deep and without hesitation. The Yamato is so sharp it takes a second for the blood to show, and he pushes the pain aside like the inconsequential annoyance it is. “Is that good enough for you, brother?”

Dante doesn’t move, just stares at him, his eyes wide.

“No?” It’s starting to heal, so Vergil cuts again, the exact same line. His blood drips down his palm and to the floor; and as he feels his forearm start to mend itself again, he moves to cut it again—

Dante catches him by his wrist wielding the Yamato, hard.

“Stop it,” he demands.

Vergil raises an eyebrow at him, impassive. “Like you did?”

“ _Please_.” Dante’s eyes are pleading, his chest covered with his own blood but all of his attention on Vergil.

“We’re half-demons, little brother, are you scared of a little blood?”

 _There_ , a flash of red at the bottom of Dante’s eyes, a shadow of wings behind him for barely a second. His teeth seem too sharp in his mouth, and _oh_ , Vergil knows exactly how it feels, to look at his beloved brother and see only prey. Vindictive, he hopes Dante enjoys the sensation just as much as he did.

He breaks Dante’s grip on his wrist and cuts the same exact line on his forearm again. The pain is a little sharper, now; his healing slower. He’s not worried.

He remembers what it takes to get his body to scar.

He thinks, almost idly, that if that’s what it’d take for Dante to see reason, he’d scar his whole body over, bleed himself over and over if he must. He’d withstand anything for Dante.

He looks Dante in the eyes as he repeats the cut once more; calm, collected.

Dante shakes his head, pleading.

“Why do you care, Dante? It’s not you I’m hurting.”

Again, and—

Tears escape Dante’s eyes and fall down his face. Vergil freezes, the Yamato touching his elbow, but not cutting yet.

“I’m _sorry_ , okay, just stop!” Dante’s desperation is palpable. “You don’t—”

“You don’t like feeling powerless?” He’s giving away too much, but he _needs_ Dante to understand. He needs to show him the other side of the coin.

Dante’s got his fists balled at his sides. “Stop, Vergil,” he says, his voice more demon than human all of a sudden.

“ _Why_?”

“You don’t understand.” Blood is escaping from between Dante’s fingers; a clear proof that his fingers are clawed. It _seems_ accidental, and yet . . .

“Open your hands, Dante.”

Dante startles, he only listens after a few seconds and he laughs at himself as he sees. “Always so perceptive,” he mutters to himself.

“And now,” Vergil orders, “Enlighten me. What do I _not understand_?’

Dante shrugs. “We heal. What does it even matter?”

Vergil slices his wrist again at the words, the same line, but deeper. He keeps his eyes on Dante, demanding a better explanation.

Dante flinches.

“I _can’t_ ,” he says, at last.

“Can’t,” Vergil repeats flatly. He doesn’t expect logic from Dante, but he needs to hear a reason. Something he could fix.

Dante takes a deep breath. “We heal,” he repeats. “I _always_ do. But I killed you, and—”

“ _Stop_ ,” Vergil snaps. It’s not the first time Dante’s said it, and suddenly, Vergil has had _enough_. “Stop using me as your _excuse_. I’m right fucking here, Dante.”

“Maybe it’s not fucking enough,” Dante snarls at him. “Maybe it doesn’t erase the years when you weren’t. Maybe I’m just a lost cause, brother. Or maybe _you_ should hurt me! Isn’t that what you do?”

Vergil takes an involuntary step back.

“Come on, brother,” Dante taunts. “Didn’t you say so yourself? _My blood is yours to draw_? Is _that_ why you’re so angry?”

Vergil wishes, completely anguished, for the power to turn back time. How could he have missed how uncharacteristically Dante had acted?

 _Because you don’t know him at all,_ he answers himself, and it’s true. He doesn’t know what constitutes Dante’s normal behaviour anymore. He’s his twin and sees his face in the mirror and doesn’t have the slightest clue what’s hiding behind Dante’s eyes. He knows, objectively, that he’d had no way of realising the extent of Dante’s problems at the time; that doesn’t mean he didn’t fail in his duties as the older brother.

Vergil doesn’t know how to talk to Dante anymore. Everything escalated, and any control he might’ve had over the situation has slipped out of his fingers like sand when he pushed Dante too far.

“I won’t play your games, Dante,” Vergil bites out.

“ _Hurt me_ , Vergil,” Dante says, like he hasn’t even heard him. Figures; he’s never paid much attention to what Vergil wanted. Everything has always had to go Dante’s way.

“No?” Dante asks.

He smiles at Vergil beatifically as he slices his jugular open.

Vergil’s trained to fight since his earliest days. One of his oldest memories feature him and Dante barely able to walk, but holding wooden swords already. The importance of observing his enemy’s every move and quick reaction has been beaten into him until it became more natural than breathing. His fighting style, polished and perfected for years, relies on speed.

But now, watching Dante, he freezes.

Dante wasn’t careful, if one could be careful cutting one’s own throat. Blood bursts from the wound in an upwards arc, hitting Vergil in the face and staining his clothes, mixing with his own blood drying on his arm. Dante staggers. He’ll heal, just like he said, but Vergil can see it’ll take a moment; Dante lets his blade fall to the ground but for a few seconds more it still shines, imbued with enough of Dante’s power to really harm him.

Even Vergil’s demon stays silent, horrified at the display.

Finally, Vergil moves, his limbs heavy as lead as he crosses the distance between them to catch Dante in his arms and lower him to the floor with gentleness Dante doesn’t deserve.

“You foolish man.”

Blood bubbles out the corner of Dante’s mouth as he tries to reply. Only once Dante falls unconscious does Vergil let himself lean forward and bury his face in Dante’s chest, listen to his erratic heartbeat.

He _will_ heal—Vergil had inflicted worse upon him in battle—but it’s terrifying for something self-inflicted, and, for the first time, Vergil fears, really fears for his brother’s life.

If Dante has done this, just how far will he go?

***

Vergil moves away the moment he feels his brother start to regain consciousness. He sits with his back against the wall, and reaches for the Yamato, trying to steady himself—only to find out that it doesn’t help. He’ll need to clean her later, but that’s not the problem here. His weapon, always a comforting touch, is now unnerving him, because he knows what he has to do.

It figures that, no matter how hard he tries, in the end he’s always bereft of choice.

Dante wakes up, finally, and immediately focuses on Vergil. He opens his mouth, but Vergil doesn’t let him say anything. Dante’s words can only make things worse; that much is obvious now.

“I’ll do it.”

It’s a promise that feels more like a curse upon his own being, but hasn’t he determined he’d be whatever Dante requires of him?

And if what Dante needs is someone to hurt him—someone to make him suffer just so that he doesn’t do it himself . . . Vergil will just have to deal with it. He’d lived through years of torture and servitude; he’d stumbled about hell, more dead than alive, losing battle upon battle. It’ll be easy, in comparison, to bring pain to Dante. Nothing challenging about cutting into Dante’s body with the Yamato when he’s asking.

It’s a relief, really, to come to this solution.

So why does he feel like he’s being forced back inside a black armour controlling his emotions and actions both?

And Dante, his beautiful Dante for whom Vergil would lay down his life with no hesitation, dares to look at him and say, “ _Thank you_ ,” his voice full of relief, as if Vergil had saved him from drowning.

***

The next time a client comes, Vergil doesn’t stop Dante from going, if only because he knows what the alternative would be. He doesn’t go with him. Being in close quarters with Dante doesn’t seem to be a good thing for either of them, and Vergil is ashamed that he welcomes the forced separation.

Dante hasn’t requested Vergil’s _assistance_ yet, but Vergil is on edge every time his brother opens his mouth to say something, which is pretty much _all the time_.

He’d been _happy_ when they cut down the Qliphoth together; reunited with his brother and truly on the same side for the first time since their childhood burnt down. He should’ve known they weren’t meant to co-exist. If they were, surely fate wouldn’t have so cruelly torn them apart at such early an age.

Dante returns around midnight, unscathed. Vergil is no longer sure if that’s a good thing.

“You missed out on all the fun,” Dante drawls.

“Are we calling exterminating Pyrobats _fun_ now? How the mighty have fallen, Dante.”

“You’re just jealous,” Dante comments, like they can exchange quips as if everything were perfectly normal, as if Dante hadn’t wrecked their chance at finding some measure of a balance again. 

Yes, maybe Vergil is jealous of Dante’s ability to pretend.

Dante passes to the kitchen and then upstairs, and Vergil stays in place, breathes in and out, his hands on the Yamato, but the meditative technique he’s practiced almost all his life, or at least conscious life, doesn’t work. 

***

He lies on the sofa with his eyes closed, nowhere near close to being asleep nor really trying to be; just a way to pass the time until the morning, as if there was something the daylight offers to await it.

As such, he hears Dante when his brother creeps down the stairs, just another shadow in the darkness. Vergil forces himself not to react, not even tense his muscles the way he instinctively wants to. Maybe his brother just wants a glass of water, or maybe he thinks the middle of the night is the perfect moment to finish his disgusting cold pizza. Maybe Vergil can be lucky just this once.

As if.

Dante approaches him, still quiet, his movements those of a hunter. The only reason Vergil’s aware of his movements is because he’s a predator too, always ready to strike. Maybe if he weren’t, Dante wouldn’t have asked for Vergil to strike at _him_.

He expects words. He doesn’t expect Dante to reach out and touch the Yamato. He lets him, for the length of one heartbeat, and then he opens his eyes.

“If you want to pretend to sleep some more, the bed is more comfortable,” Dante tells him, unsurprised.

Vergil pries his weapon from Dante’s loose grasp. He waits.

Maybe Dante will understand his own madness and halt it.

Dante laughs, short and unhappy as if he can hear Vergil’s thoughts. “You’ll make me ask?”

Vergil swallows down a flare of anger. Dante’s uncomfortable with the act of asking, but not actually what he’s asking for, is he? He’s got that backwards, as usual. Vergil keeps his eyes on Dante and his hand firmly on the Yamato, but doesn’t reply quite yet.

“Hurt me,” Dante whispers, his voice stripped of his usual masks and deflections: raw and hoarse and ruined.

Vergil knew it was coming. There’s no reason for the way the request makes his heart spasm painfully in his chest.

He sits up. “If we do it,” he says, like he hadn’t fucking promised already, “we do it _my_ way.”

Dante nods mutely.

Vergil thumbs at the tsuba. _I’m sorry_ , he thinks. _I shouldn’t use you for this_.

But he will, because it’s his little brother, and Vergil refuses to sully him with an unworthy blade, even if Dante himself doesn’t have any such scruples.

Vergil stands up, motions to the door leading to the basement. “Or do you wish to scrub blood out of your floor here again?”

Dante huffs a laugh. “Always the planner.”

Vergil can’t joke here.

He knows there are unused rooms downstairs; some of them containing Devil Arms, some full of demonic artefacts that probably shouldn’t be kept so close together, and some empty, waiting their turn; apparently one was now going to be hallowed with Dante’s blood. 

“Strip,” he orders once they get there.

Dante raises an eyebrow, but Vergil doesn’t let him provoke him. Dante shrugs and pulls his t-shirt off, revealing his chest, spotless but for the scar on his sternum where Vergil had stabbed him with the Rebellion all those years ago.

This shouldn’t feel so different.

Vergil clenches his jaw. _So you want it to hurt, little brother_? _I can make it hurt. I can make you change your mind_.

He doesn’t give Dante a warning. He pushes him against the wall with a hand on his throat, hard enough to make him hit the back of his head, and then he steps back to slash at him with the Yamato too many times to count in a space of a second. They’re not deep cuts, but more than enough to bring out his devil—

Except it doesn’t happen. Vergil expected he’d have to fight Dante back into his human form to grant him his wishes, but Dante’s just looking at him with half-lidded eyes, his hands at his sides, not even attempting to defend himself. He’d asked for this, but Vergil had been sure his demon side, at least, couldn’t be in agreement.

He twists his lips in a parody of a smile to hide his shock and drives the Yamato between Dante’s ribs, below his heart; yanks it out and repeats it because he knows Dante barely felt it the first time. The way to get past their healing factors is to repeat the same injuries—that, or overcome the whole system with too much pain. Do it for a long enough time, and even their bodies will break.

Vergil remembers what happened to his body. Here’s what he doesn’t remember: what it was that finally shattered his very soul.

(Hurting Dante like this might just do it again.)

“Hands over your head,” he whispers into Dante’s ear to push his own thoughts away, twisting the blade. Dante’s breath catches, but he obeys, and as soon as he raises his hands, Vergil drives two summoned swords through his palms to hold him still; after a moment he does the same to Dante’s legs, effectively pinning him to the wall.

He pulls the Yamato out. He takes to Dante’s arms, using them as his canvas, tracing red patterns over and over again, deeper each time. It’s almost an afterthought to summon one more sword and drive it through Dante’s stomach. Sweat’s starting to bead on Dante’s forehead as he spits blood.

That Dante asked for this doesn’t make Vergil any less of a monster.

Vergil hadn’t demanded his silence, but Dante never speaks. It might be a mercy; it might be the opposite.

Doesn’t matter.

He continues with Dante’s arms, and, only when the cuts stop healing almost as soon as he makes them, he proceeds to do the same to Dante’s chest; makes Dante scream for the first time when he slices through his nipple.

 _Little brother, say you’ve had enough_.

He thinks he hates Dante for making him do it as he stabs him right in the solar plexus. Plunging the Yamato into Dante’s body is like having it break all over again; his own hand is shaking on its hilt. Dante’s crying, tears running down his face, but he never tells Vergil to stop.

He yanks his sword out again and uses the tip to trace a bloody line over Dante’s heart. He would like to think it’s trust that makes Dante give in so completely, some kind of a belief that he won’t go too far, but he’s afraid Dante just doesn’t care.

He waits until the wound in his chest closes and drives the Yamato through his solar plexus again. And again.

Dante’s screaming.

Vergil stabs him through his lung. The scream cuts off, Dante’s breath wheezing. He’s still crying silently, shivering so hard he’s hurting himself on the summoned blades.

Vergil meets his eyes for the first time and regrets it immediately. He looked for hate, but Dante just looks at peace.

Vergil continues. He cuts through Dante’s skin and slices through his bones and stabs through his body and it’s not _hard_ , certainly nothing to tire him out, but the Yamato has never felt so heavy, not even when he was eight and desperately trying to run while holding a katana longer than his body.

“ _Brother_ ,” Dante whispers, barely audible, when Vergil stops with the Yamato aimed at his heart again. Dante’s whole upper body is covered in blood and cuts upon cuts that aren’t healing anymore, that won’t heal for a while, certainly not before Dante rests.

 _A good brother, the kind of a brother that you deserve, wouldn’t do that to you_ , Vergil thinks as he punctures his heart.

It’s not life-threatening, not for Dante, not when Vergil isn’t actually actively trying to kill him with the Yamato’s power. It’s enough to make him black out.

There’s a weird sort of phantom pain in Vergil’s own chest when he pulls his sword out, but he pays it no mind. It’s Dante who’s important here, Dante who he has to take care of now that he’s ruined him.

Dismissing the summoned swords, he catches Dante as he falls and gently lays him down. He cleans the dried blood from his skin. He teleports them upstairs and lays Dante down on the bed, covering him with his own coat. Dante’s still hurt and defenceless now, and for once, Vergil’s demon does not react—this is the kind of wrong only humans are capable of committing.

He needs to remind himself to breathe. 

Vergil leaves through a portal. One, then another, a series of doorways until finally he comes out to face a demon nest.

He kills them before any could even come close to scratching him; _such a shame_ , his treacherous brain whispers. He stands still after the carnage, looking at the Yamato’s blade; the fact that it’s covered with black ichor now doing nothing to erase the memory of Dante’s blood on it from Vergil’s mind.

He bends in half, violently sick.

He laughs when a demon that he must've missed stabs him from behind, an eyesore of a broadsword piercing all the way through his body until it he can see it protruding from his stomach.

He kills the Angelo— _if only it were that easy_ —and he wonders if he really is free.

Maybe he’s back at the Mallet Castle, immersed in Mundus’ all-encompassing illusion; maybe this is how he loses his mind. But no; what he remembers was never painful like this. Mundus couldn’t hurt him the way Dante so effortlessly does.

There’s a whole squadron of the Angelo demons, again, and Vergil goes through them, these mirrors of who he used to be, like a proof that his past will never let him go.

***

Dante’s still out of it when Vergil comes back. He pushes his coat aside to look at Dante’s chest, a smooth expanse of skin as if everything Vergil did to him had never happened, like he hadn’t cut through every inch of his brother’s body and made him cry.

Just one scar remains, as ever: the one on Dante’s sternum. Vergil hadn’t known when he’d stabbed Dante with the Rebellion that it’d leave another mark beyond Dante’s demon being awakened, hadn’t realised there even was a way of scarring them. He’d been a naïve idiot. He should’ve caught Dante’s hand when he extended it. Maybe then Dante wouldn’t have ended up like this.

Or maybe this was the only path they could’ve walked.

No point in worrying over what he can’t change. 

He goes back downstairs and finally gives the Yamato the attention she deserves. Devil Arms technically don’t need maintenance, but he’s gotten into the habit when he was younger, and he’s not like Dante, amassing an arsenal that he doesn’t care about. He only has her.

He gently taps the blade with the uchiko ball on the both sides before slowly, carefully wiping it off with a tissue. Normally, he admires the lethal beauty of his weapon, but he just feels uneasy now.

 _Damn you, Dante_.

He rubs Choji oil into it next, inhaling the earthy tang of the clove oil.

“One could get jealous watching you with the Yamato.”

Vergil doesn’t startle, but it’s a near thing. He should’ve sensed Dante waking up; how the hell didn’t he? This is _dangerous_. He focuses on reassembling his weapon instead of answering.

“Yup. Definitely jealous.” Even Dante’s voice is all healed, like he hadn’t screamed himself hoarse.

Vergil breathes; in and out; calm. Collected. “You named your sword after yourself, Dante, I hardly think you can comment on what I do with the Yamato.”

Dante shrugs, easy and loose as if all Vergil had done was give him a massage.

“It seemed appropriate,” he drawls.

“Of course, brother. I’m sure it had nothing to do with you being unable to think of any other name. Creativity has never been your strong suit.”

“Whatever, _V_.”

It’s the kind of remark that normally would make Vergil attack him. Instead, he just grips the Yamato hard enough that his knuckles go white. He tries to put himself together, wrap himself back in his layers of icy indifference. It used to be so easy before he’d spliced his own soul.

If he stabbed himself with the Yamato again, could he discard these emotions like the nightmares he’d left behind? Could he sculpt himself into the perfect tool for what Dante needs him to be? Dante ended up killing his nightmares; it’s only fitting he’d destroy Vergil’s heart, too.

Dante sets Vergil’s coat on the sofa next to him, his hand hovering over it for a few more seconds. He’s folded it in an uncharacteristic gesture that Vergil can’t decipher.

“Thank you.” His voice is brittle and serious. It’s the real Dante, the one Vergil barely knows, the one he’s never understood and never will.

He nods. There is no reply he could potentially give _._ He’d hurt Dante with the childish, pathetic hope that enough pain would make him stop craving more, and now he knows this is not the case; there is no stopping this.

***

It’s late. Vergil’s reading, enjoying the silence and the calmness and most of all not having to think about Dante’s every move when he whips his head up, because Dante _wakes_.

Vergil grabs at the Yamato to steady himself; let’s go half a second later, suddenly afraid he’ll have to hold her for a whole different reason when Dante comes downstairs. Vergil keeps his eyes on the book, unseeing. It's a spellbook of a kind; most of them useless as far as he can judge, but the exorcism section is almost shockingly detailed with description of rituals, trapping circles and purifying incantations. There are notes made in different ink colours on the margins, accounts of experiments and trials that seem legitimate. The tome is a few centuries old and Vergil found it forgotten in Dante's cellar; the fact that it's still intact is explained by the protective runes layered over the cover. It's a dangerous book to leave without care: properly powered and executed, the exorcisms could potentially send even him and Dante back to hell.

He’s still staring at it, stubborn, when Dante fits himself on the sofa next to him and taps at his hand to get his attention. Vergil looks up, and Dante’s intent is clear in the way he reaches for Vergil’s arm to steady himself as leans in, his face angled just so to kiss Vergil.

Vergil twists away.

Dante frowns with obvious surprise. “Something’s wrong? Do I have pizza on my face?”

Vergil makes sure his voice is even before he speaks, “No, Dante.”

“Then?”

_I ran a sword through your heart because you asked._

“I’m busy.” Vergil points at the book he’s holding. “I realise you’ve never really cared about disturbing me while I was reading back when we were eight, but one could hope that particular trait could change with age.”

“You’ve been staring at the same page for ten minutes.” Dante’s tone says _gotcha_ , like it’s a game they’re playing, like Vergil’s putting up a protest just so that Dante can win him over, like it’s all about Dante and Dante’s ideas and Dante’s wishes—

Well, if Dante demands the truth, then he shall have it.

“You asked me to hurt you, brother,” Vergil says quietly, keeping his gaze carefully on the words that he can’t focus on. “I have no doubts that you’ll ask again. Do not ask more of me, for I do not have anything more to give.”

“You didn’t used to mind fighting me and fucking me in the space of one hour.” Dante huffs a bitter laugh. “What, does it only do it for you when I don’t ask to be hurt?”

Vergil’s hands spasm, tearing the priceless ancient grimoire in half. He stares at the pages, for a blink of an eye thinking they’re covered in blood. But no; this is another kind of destruction.

“And you used to say it was me messing up your things,” Dante comments.

“Dante,” Vergil says. “ _Please_.”

Dante flinches. He backs away, his posture straight for once, as he looks Vergil over. He feels almost naked under the scrutiny for all that he’s completely dressed, the shredded book in his lap the only proof that something’s off.

“Vergil,” Dante says. He starts to say something else, stops himself. He smiles, but it resembles a grimace of pain more than anything else. “Come to bed.”

“Dante—”

Dante shakes his head. “Just to sleep. I miss you.”

Yeah. Vergil misses his brother too.

“I’m not tired, brother.” He lifts one of the ruined pages. “I shall fix this, anyway.” He learnt about book conservation back when he’d been researching their father, before his fall over twenty years ago—another, easier lifetime. For the longest time, he’d thought he was alone; without Dante at his side, what else was he supposed to believe?

But now Dante’s right here, an arm’s reach away, and the distance between them is an impossible chasm. They’re supposed to be twins, as Dante had put it once, but even on top of Temen-Ni-Gru, even falling, Vergil had never felt further removed from Dante than he is now.

Then, their shared blood resonated within each other, and while their goals were opposite, Vergil _recognised_ parts of himself in his brother. Now, Dante is a mystery to him—and one that Vergil doesn’t really want to solve anymore.

Dante throws his hands up, angry, grabs his coat and leaves; Vergil leans his head back and stares at the ceiling lights long past when his eyes start to hurt.

***

Dante comes back drunk, which isn’t a surprise. Vergil’s vision is full of dancing spots when he blinks, making him vaguely dizzy for the few moments before his body fixes the damage he’d done to his retina.

He tracks Dante’s movements then, but his brother is at least still able to walk in a straight line this time. He drops his coat to the floor and goes to stand in front of Vergil, looking down at him.

“ _Fix the book_ , huh.” The accusation is clear in his voice.

Vergil hadn’t moved since Dante left; the ripped pages remain in his lap. He’s not sure how long it’s been. He’s not sure he cares.

“Hurt me,” Dante says and Vergil would laugh at the predictability of it all if it wasn’t quite so tragic.

Dante feels so guilty about killing him as Nelo Angelo, but if only he’d done that right, Vergil wouldn’t be here for him to use to alleviate that guilt in the first place.

He doesn’t answer. He sets the ruined book carefully to the side, already aware he won’t ever fix it. Then he lifts the Yamato, heads downstairs without waiting for Dante to follow, and when Dante inevitably does, Vergil damages him over and over again.

Looking at Dante’s face is his own punishment.

He doesn’t make Dante lose consciousness this time, so when he’s done, he says, “Clean up,” in a coarse voice as if he was the one screaming. He turns his back so he doesn’t have to watch Dante picking himself up slowly.

***

There are moments when Dante resembles himself, unbearably gorgeous as he hefts his sword on his shoulder, his smile as dazzling as it is dangerous. Vergil watches him, and his demon stirs within him, both parts of his nature in agreement as always when it comes to his desire for Dante.

Then he blinks, and there are tears on Dante’s face and blood on his chest, the Yamato plunged into his heart.

“Morrison got us a job,” Dante’s saying, and he’s unharmed, everything Vergil had done to him healed with no mark—

Almost everything. Dante might be clothed, but Vergil knows where his scars are hidden, could trace the exact places on his own smooth skin. How can he even think of touching him after everything?

“I’m not going.”

Dante’s smile falters for a moment. “What, you’d rather stay here and be bored?”

“This might shock you, but I don’t consider wiping out lesser demons particularly entertaining.”

“Whatever. See if I take you next time.”

His sword dematerialises. Vergil watches with a bone-deep exhaustion as Dante goes out without looking back once. He can hear him starting the old car he owns. He doesn’t know how far the job is, but Dante had managed travelling without the Yamato for years, so it doesn’t matter.

He sits on the sofa where he’s been spending most of his time lately. He doesn’t reach for any book. He’s read everything occult that’s in the building already, and he’s not in the mood for anything else.

This whole place smells like Dante. It used to make Vergil relax.

He sighs. He gets back up, takes out the Yamato and slashes through the fabric of reality. He’s lucky, this time, finding a demon nest immediately, but even as he fights his way through it, he wonders why he can’t just open a portal back into hell.

(Dante’s the reason; Dante’s always his reason.)

Hell Antenora’s blade catches him on his right wrist, almost hacking his hand off. The Yamato slides out of his suddenly senseless fingers. He strikes back with her sheath, hard enough to make the demon turn to ash under the strength of the hit.

He looks at his wrist, impassionate when he sees his own bone. The wound is healing slower than it should. There are still demons around him, so he transforms, and he tears them apart with his claws and tail and fangs.

When he’s human again, he’s healed, even the headache that’d been brewing behind his eyes gone, and it’s only when he picks up the Yamato again that he realises he cannot hold her without seeing Dante’s blood on his hands and her blade anymore.

 _No_. _You won’t take her from me, brother_.

(But Dante already has, without ever laying his own hands on her.)

***

Blood is dribbling down from the corner of Dante’s mouth, his breath wheezing, and Vergil slides the Yamato between his ribs as easily as if he were cutting through paper.

“I’m sorry,” Dante whispers, quiet and ruined, and for a few long moments Vergil stands completely still, sure he’s misheard, but then Dante repeats it, more insistent. “I _am_ sorry, Vergil.”

“Is it my forgiveness you seek?” Vergil asks with a kind of detached curiosity. “You have it.”

Was this what Dante craved all this time? If Vergil had said it earlier, could they have avoided this?

Dante shudders all over as Vergil pulls his sword free, but even so, the shake of his head is an unmistakable gesture. “I know you’re here,” he lets out, his eyes shining as if in delirium. “I know I should be better.”

“Dante—”

Vergil had left his hands free this time; he regrets it when Dante grabs at him and digs his fingers into his arms.

“I know you must hate it. Me.”

Vergil should push him off or cut his throat to make him stop talking, but he can’t bring himself to, not when Dante’s voice is raw with an honesty Vergil’s learnt to associate with liquor. Dante’s sober now, though, and so it seems like Vergil had cut with the Yamato too deeply into him, all the way into the truth hiding in his soul.

“I could never hate you, little brother.”

Dante laughs: a horrible sound devoid of any real mirth.

“ _Liar_.” He wraps his arms around Vergil, presses them together in a mockery of a hug like he’s not been injured by Vergil’s hand, resting his forehead on Vergil’s shoulder.

Vergil wants to hug him back, wants to pretend things can get better, but the Yamato remains unsheathed in his hand, its blade crimson with Dante’s blood. “Put an end to this,” he demands, or maybe he begs.

“I can’t,” Dante says, an admission of a weakness that Vergil doesn’t understand and Dante doesn’t control. “You’re _here_ , but I only know it’s real when I’m bleeding.”

 _It’d be better if I were an apparition, then_.

“I’m sorry,” Dante repeats, crying against him, and Vergil suddenly knows, as surely as if he were clairvoyant, that Dante will keep asking for this and Vergil will continue agreeing, if his blade drawing his blood really is the only thing granting Dante some momentary peace.

He wishes it could bring _him_ peace, too.

***

It’s a routine of sorts.

Vergil doesn’t sleep, and on the nights that Dante doesn’t either, he inevitably says, “ _Hurt me_ ,” and every time Vergil bathes the Yamato in his brother’s blood, it’s like another part of his soul is gone.

It makes sense. Vergil had only ever had half of a soul to begin with, the other half of his being enclosed in Dante’s body; of course he cannot feel whole when all he does is bring Dante pain.

“You still won't kiss me?” Dante asks idly one day. Vergil raises his eyes to meet Dante's, a cutting answer at the tip of his tongue, and realises Dante hasn't even bothered to clean the blood off his chest. There was a time when seeing him half-naked and bloody made Vergil's blood run hot, his demon mad with the desire to touch. It’s gone now, but this has never been about what he wants.

Vergil steps to Dante and still doesn't kiss him just like Dante foresaw; instead he slides to his knees in front of him and reaches for his belt; doesn’t protest when after a surprised inhale, Dante settles a hand on his head.

He'll do whatever Dante needs him to; he knows a thing or two about being a good servant.

***

The days pass in a blur; the nights all mix together. On the good ones, Vergil tries to read, too often catching himself distracted, staring at the same passage for hours without comprehension. On the bad ones, he stabs Dante and Dante thanks him for it. Sometimes Dante will want him, and then Vergil will spend long minutes trying to scrub his scent from his skin, a too vivid reminder of all that’s gone wrong and all that he can’t really have.

Vergil only realises that Dante’s stopped going out for demon-hunting jobs when he stands in front of him, dark circles around his eyes as if he, too, can’t sleep, and says, “Spar with me.”

 _No_ , Vergil thinks, and then, _Does it even matter?_

He’ll end up hurting Dante one way or another anyway.

He takes the Yamato, opens a portal to a desolate area where they don’t have to worry about destroying the shop, because that’s what’s important: that a building keeps standing, not what Dante—

The portal flickers perilously and Dante narrows his eyes. “You okay?”

“Yes. Go through.”

Dante, predictably, doesn’t; he never passes through Vergil’s portals before or after him, always, even now, right at his side. They re-emerge into reality in a barren land stripped of almost any vegetation; it’s an old mine that had been defunct long before a hell gate opened in the vicinity and scared any other humans away. Vergil had closed it, but they’d both agreed that it was as good a training ground as any.

They stand opposite each other. Dante attacks first.

It’s an unfamiliar feeling, these days, to raise the Yamato to protect himself against Dante, to have Dante block a coming hit and dodge another instead of seeking out the pain. The metallic clash of the Yamato against Dante’s sword is a sound Vergil hadn’t realised he’d missed.

They trade blows, never landing one, a reminder of how perfectly matched they are, of how in harmony they _should_ be. Too soon, Vergil grows tired; realises his own reflexes had grown slower than his normal lethal speed. A distant, logical part of his brain tries to remember the last time he’d slept. Chides him for neglecting himself, letting himself grow weak.

That’s a mistake. Thinking of anything that’s not Dante while going up against him is a dangerous distraction.

He should’ve known better. He _does_ know better, and yet.

He’s completely open for the Devil Sword Dante to stab him in his sternum, pierce through his whole body to tear out at his back.

It brings forward a flash of memories, a black armour confining his moves and biting into his body, a white-haired man he doesn’t and does know driving his sword through his body, a name at the tip of his tongue as if his voice wasn’t gone; his body finally overcome past any healing abilities, the final blow to ruin him and grant him the freedom that the utter devastation brings—for a long time, he’d been rendered into nothingness, and he had been grateful.

The vision is gone, and he spits blood as pain washes over him.

Dante’s wide, terrified eyes are the last thing he sees.

***

He comes to slowly, his senses returning one by one. He’s lying somewhere soft and comfortable, warm; somewhat of an alien situation. It smells familiar, though, of roses and leather, with another, heavier scent in the air that makes his hair stand on end. It’s a demon’s scent, a powerful demon’s— _Dante’s_ ; he recognises the undertone of fire and ashes and an old perfume hiding under the raw power of it. He can hear soft breathing next to him, now: his brother is there.

“I can feel you’re awake,” Dante says, but his voice is lacking its usual, if faked, cheerfulness.

Vergil opens his eyes to confirm what he already knows: that he’s back in the bedroom at the Devil May Cry. Dante’s sitting in a chair nearby, and the Yamato is sheathed, lying on the mattress at Vergil’s side. He reaches for her on instinct, stopping short of running his fingers over the hilt. He’s been misusing her horribly lately.

“I’m surprised we’re not still at the mine.” He doesn’t ask the real question, which is _Did you fly us both back here_ ; the idea of Dante’s devil form carrying him too humiliating to consider.

“Yeah, well, your sword loves you, so she didn’t send me to hell when I tried to open a portal back home.”

Vergil thumbs at the tsuba in silent acknowledgement before sitting up; she deserves his thanks even if he can’t quite ignore the brief memory of stabbing Dante through the heart. The blanket slides down his body and he realises he’s naked, his skin as smooth as ever and cleaned of any blood.

“Yeah, not so fast,” Dante says. “What the hell was that, Verge?”

“You won. It’s been known to happen on rare occasions.”

Dante snickers. “Rare my ass.” He grows serious again. “I’ve _never_ scored a hit like that on you so easily, and it shouldn’t have been enough to render you unconscious at all, much less for that long.”

Vergil shrugs languidly. “Your concern is noted, brother, but I had simply gotten distracted.”

He thinks he must’ve been out for at least a few hours, judging by how much lighter his limbs feel. There’s still fatigue lingering at the edges of his mind, but the forced rest has made him feel better physically at least. Sleep is just one more fault of the human body that he’s a subject to, and he hates it.

A demon wouldn’t mind doing what Dante keeps asking him for. A demon wouldn’t grow tired, either.

“For a moment—I thought I’d killed you.” _Again_ , he doesn’t say, but Vergil can read it from his face easily enough, the meaning clear in how harrowed he sounds.

Vergil gives him an impassive look. “Really, Dante? Neither of us is easy to kill.”

“And yet, I managed.” Dante’s looking at him, but not seeing him; memories reflecting in his eyes.

“Under vastly different circumstances,” Vergil says sharply. He makes to stand.

Dante grabs at his wrist and leans in, worry evident in his expression. “Please talk to me, brother.”

“I’m _fine_ , Dante.” He shakes his hand free. “Now, I do not share your affinity for walking around naked, so I’m going to get dressed and—”

“And what, go back to pretending you sleep at night?” Dante snaps. “Look, I get it, you have nightmares, but—”

Nightmares in which he stabs Dante and Dante never wakes up; nightmares in which Dante bleeds out on the Yamato’s blade; nightmares in which he maims Dante until his skin turns white and his veins dark against it, his eyes black with red irises, a perfect mirror of who Vergil used to be.

Dante probably imagines something different.

“I’m fine,” Vergil repeats. “Stop fretting, Dante. You’re not mother.”

This does the trick, for all that it hurts Vergil too, like a thorn piercing his heart; a rose one—she did so love those flowers.

Dante storms out of the room, yelling obscenities in Vergil’s direction, leaving him to pick himself up and put the little pieces of his being back into something resembling himself once more.

Such a shame that Dante hadn’t aimed for his heart.

***

Dante is as predictable as ever when he demands that Vergil hurt him again, later that day.

He strips easily and shamelessly as he always does, so Vergil doesn’t pay him any attention until Dante straightens and stands in front of him, his shoulders squared, ready for Vergil to draw his blood once more.

Vergil tips his head up with the Yamato, about to pierce his skin, when his eyes catch on Dante’s chest and he freezes. 

He knows Dante’s scars intimately, the ones that he can see: the markings Dante had given himself on his wrist; the thin slice Vergil had cut through his palm; the big, ugly scar over his stomach where he’d used the Rebellion to wake his demon up.

There’s a new scar now, just over Dante’s heart, sharp and precise like the point of the Yamato.

He knows what it takes to scar them, and he’d done that to Dante without even _noticing_.

He wants to recoil. He almost drops the Yamato, and only in the last moment does he make himself lower her slowly, away from Dante.

“I can’t,” he says.

Dante tilts his head. “Vergil . . .” His voice is pained. “I need you.”

“Do you, now,” Vergil wonders, and it takes all of his willpower to point his sword at Dante again, at just the right angle to drive it through his heart again if he moved forward. Dante looks down at his own body and frowns.

“Ah.” He puts his hand over the new scar, hiding it from view as if Vergil could ever forget about its existence now. “I don’t mind.”

Laughter threatens to bubble out of his throat. Of fucking course Dante doesn’t mind. Maybe he _likes_ it, even.

Maybe he hopes one of those times he won’t heal from what Vergil does to him.

“I won’t do it anymore, Dante.”

Dante grabs at the Yamato’s blade like he hasn’t heard, the sensitive skin of his fingers cutting easily on it, his blood once more running down the length of it.

“I need you.” Desperation is palpable in his voice. “Vergil, I—” He’s pulling the Yamato closer to his chest, channelling his power through it; Vergil can feel it clashing over his own link to her, and even as rage raises in him—Dante _dares_ to touch Vergil’s weapon like that?—he remembers how easily, unhesitatingly Dante had cut through his own throat.

The same fear returns, Dante going a step too far, _Dante leaving Vergil_.

His brother always wins, in the end.

Vergil twists the Yamato, making Dante let go of her if he doesn’t want to lose his fingers, and in a flash of a movement he stabs her through Dante’s stomach and pins him to the wall.

“You _always_ have to have it your way, don’t you,” he snarls, and there’s nothing _controlled_ about the way he assaults Dante’s body now, nothing _contained_ ; he steers clear of Dante’s heart and marks every other inch of him in sorrow so great it’s evolved past sadness and straight into ire.

It goes on: Dante’s arms and hands, Dante’s chest, the Yamato piercing his lungs until he’s coughing up blood, cutting through his bones and tearing screams from his throat when he can breathe again; slices over his thighs and gashes across his stomach.

He’s panting with the exertion, his mind a mess of conflicting emotions, love and hate in equal measures fuelled by anger, and as he moves to strike at Dante again, Dante _flinches_.

Vergil comes to himself, aghast and appalled. He looks at Dante, bleeding all over, and he _flees_.

***

Away from Dante, away from the Devil May Cry, Vergil sheds his coat and his vest and looks down at his smooth, unscarred body with something not unlike hatred. He remembers torture and its fruits upon his skin, his body covered in more scar tissue than not, his veins running black under his pale skin. He’d spent years walking through hell, stumbling every other step, swaying on his feet; losing battle upon battle and collecting new scars on top of the old ones, his healing barely enough to keep him alive, never mind fixing the damage wrecked upon him. 

And then, when it’d become too much, when he was almost dying, he split his own being into two. His human self didn’t bear his scars, but it did bear his weaknesses. Upon his re-formation, Vergil’s body was smooth and strong, the way it’d been before he fell, too many years ago to count. Some days, he was glad for it: the proofs of his failures were gone and he could look at himself without remembering—

Except he couldn’t. It’d always been somehow uncanny to look at his skin and see it lacking the markings and scars he’d carried; it’s even worse now, after what he’d done to Dante.

He’d been lashing out, barely in control of himself, but he remembers every hit, every little sound Dante had made, every minute tension of his muscles.

Grimly determined, he drives the Yamato through his own chest.

There’s no intent behind it like when he’d cut himself into V and Urizen, and so he remains himself, all his guilt and hatred still locked within his body. He longs for the release cutting them out would bring him, but he has learnt his lesson about splintering his soul: in the end, it only makes things worse.

The shock of the blow makes him stagger all the same, but he doesn’t waver, and he stabs himself again, and again, and the Yamato doesn’t sing for him like she usually does: she just screams.

He deserves it. All he’d ever wanted was the power to _protect_ Dante. He’d done the exact opposite.

He chokes on his blood when he punctures his lung, and he falls to his knees, unable to stand; weak and pathetic— _how disgraceful, Son of Sparda_ , a voice echoes through his memories, reverberating through his whole soul and making his bones shake like he’s back in the Underworld, taken apart by Mundus over and over again.

He thinks of Dante, and of how he’d put Dante through worse, and of how Dante had withstood it all—until Vergil had gone too far; always the one to ruin his little brother. His sword hand is shaking with the strain, but he grits his teeth and ignores it and turns the Yamato on himself once more.

He slices through his own skin and bleeds on his own blade until he grows dizzy with pain and blood loss and even then he continues, doesn’t rest until he’s marked his body in the exact same pattern he’d delivered to Dante earlier.

The tears on his face aren’t for him. 

His demon is raging inside him, demanding to be let out, ordering him to stop, and Vergil keeps it in check with absolute willpower. He’s healing already anyway, _too soon_ ; he doesn’t deserve the relief that his demon would bring him.

He lies flat on the ground, and with the last of his strength he raises the Yamato over his body and stabs himself right through his heart.

 _How could you do it to yourself, Dante_ , Vergil used to wonder, and now he has the answer he’d looked for all this time that Dante, unsurprisingly, was unable to provide, for it’s not something that can be explained instead of experienced: it really is quite easy to turn your sword on yourself when you hate yourself enough.

***

Dante finds him.

Vergil wakes with a gasp as someone yanks the Yamato out of his chest, his hands reaching for it in an instinctive reaction that makes absolutely no sense as he just manages to slice his fingertips on the blade as it’s being pulled away.

He bites on his lower lip to stifle any sounds as pain explodes in his body and blood spurts from the wound. It’s only as he takes shallow, excruciating breaths and the feeling of air filling his lungs seems wrong that he realises—

He’d been hoping he wouldn’t wake up again.

It’s the kind of thinking that his demon cannot fathom, and he roars inside Vergil’s skin with indignity, rebelling against the show of human weakness. There’s something else putting him on edge, though, and Vergil acquiesces and takes his surroundings in the way his monster demands.

Dante’s healed and clothed over him, a dark figure glowing with his red demonic power flowing around his body in waves that make Vergil’s demon growl in his soul.

When Dante raises the Yamato, Vergil thinks ( _hopes_ ), idiotically, that Dante will stab him and finish the job he’d started back on Mallet Island. Dante just drives it to the ground next to his head, though, hard enough that only the hilt remains visible, as if he couldn’t bear looking at the blade any longer.

“ _Why_?” Dante’s voice is echoing with demonic undertones, making the single syllable sound out for a long time.

“Really, brother?” Vergil tries to push himself to an upright position, but his limbs aren’t cooperating, his body too light and too heavy all at once. It should be worrying, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s so tired that even his demon can’t take over no matter how much it keeps scolding him. “Aren’t we twins?” Not two halves of a whole, like Vergil had used to think: just mirror reflections, incapable of ever fitting each other quite the right way.

“You _promised_ you wouldn’t leave again.” Dante’s power is still out of control, but his voice is all wrong, human, ragged and rasping, and the way he’s almost _choking_ on his words like he’s _crying over Vergil_.

Vergil doesn’t know how to stay near Dante without hurting him anymore. He can’t make the right choice, because there are _no_ right choices. V was wrong; it’s Vergil who should’ve never existed, let Dante have a happy life without a twin who’s never done anything but bring him ruin. He’d tried so hard to be what Dante needed, and he still failed . . . Isn’t it just the story of his life? Always a failure, never enough. His thoughts start running in circles and he loses focus. Every beat of his heart sends him into agony as he stares at his brother.

Dante finally reigns his power in, but now that the energy emanating off him is gone, it’s all the more obvious that he’s shaking like a leaf, his hands closed into fists and his eyes still red—no longer because they’re glowing, but in the all-too-human way, full of unshed tears.

Vergil’s demon relaxes now that the threat of Dante’s has disappeared, but the demon has been the only thing keeping him going and without him, intense, deep exhaustion hits Vergil. Dante’s saying something, but Vergil can’t hear him anymore, dizzy and in pain, and as he looks, the world around Dante grows darker, until all Vergil can see is his face, and then—

Nothing.

Beautiful, blissful nothing—

A rich taste blossoms across his tongue, sharp and sweet both, liquidised power sliding down his throat. He chokes on it, but it’s relentless, and he swallows helplessly even though it’s like every single cell in his body is on fire.

After a moment, the sensation lessens somehow, turning weirdly familiar, and Vergil opens his eyes in a shock—when had he closed them?—to find Dante pressing his own wrist to Vergil’s lips.

He pushes him away, then, the taste of Dante’s blood in his mouth unwelcome after the months of forcing himself to stop considering his own brother prey.

“ _Vergil_.” There’s something in the way he says the name, like it’s something _precious_ to him, and then he grabs at Vergil’s shoulders and holds on with an inhuman strength that Vergil can’t counter at the moment (another sign of his ever-present weakness, his brain whispers). Dante presses his face into Vergil’s chest, on the opposite side from his heart, and stills. Vergil doesn’t understand what’s happening until he feels Dante shake against him and hears him cry, sobs wracking his body as he clings to Vergil.

“Dante?” he asks quietly. He’s still only barely able to move his arms after all the strain he’d put his body through, and he elects to keep his hands down at his sides, not knowing what to do in the face of Dante’s grief.

“ _Don’t do that to me_ ,” Dante orders, but his words are barely intelligible.

Vergil wonders briefly how Dante managed to find him, though in hindsight he wasn’t hiding his presence, and the training grounds are within a flying distance for either of them. That Dante bothered to look—that he still doesn’t want Vergil to disappear . . . It means something, but _what_? He’s certainly never seemed to care about Vergil lately.

But now he’s weeping into his chest, his grip on Vergil probably bruising, and he’s just repeating Vergil’s name like a prayer, over and over until the sounds all run together, until he finally stops speaking, desperately trying to catch his breath.

“Dante,” Vergil repeats, and this time Dante raises his head. He looks like a mess: his cheeks are wet, his eyes swollen with tears, and he makes no move to wipe at his face, keeps his hands fisted in Vergil’s coat.

“What do you want from me?” Vergil asks at last, once he’s ascertained Dante’s not going to break down again on him.

There’s no hesitation in Dante’s voice, even ragged as it is from crying. “I want my brother back.” 

Vergil doesn’t know what that means anymore. In a way, neither of them has had a brother ever since they were ripped apart from each other at eight years of age; a wound that still hasn’t properly scarred. He’s been Dante’s enemy and Dante’s ally, Dante’s regret and Dante’s torturer, Dante’s tool and Dante’s lover; somewhere along the way he forgot what it is to be his brother. He suspects Dante might’ve forgotten, too, or he’d be able to remind him, lead him out of the tangled mess that’s formed between them.

Dante found him and fed him his blood, but it’s not like spilling his own blood means anything for him anymore.

Vergil’s still too weak to sit, and distantly he’s aware he should hate—he _does_ hate it—but he can’t bring himself to care, because if he can’t move then Dante can’t ask him to hurt him, and . . . He’s said it before. He doesn’t know why he thinks this time will be any different, but he tries all the same.

“I can’t keep doing this to you, Dante.”

Dante nods, without thinking, immediately.

It’s not good enough.

“ _I mean it_.” Vergil looks at him. “ _Don’t_ say you agree just because you got scared.”

“ _Scared_?” Dante repeats incredulously. “I saw you impaled on the Yamato—I thought you were dead, that you—”

“And what did you expect?” Vergil snarls at him. He manages to sit up, Dante’s hands finally leaving him, but a fresh wave of dizziness washes over him. He breathes through it, annoyed at his body taking so long to heal completely even with Dante’s blood’s help. “Did you think so little of me to believe I’d _enjoy_ cutting you to pieces?”

Dante shakes his head. His breathing is still uneven. “I—” He stops himself. “I don’t fucking know, Vergil. You were back, and I thought everything would be better, but it wasn’t, and—I killed you, how could I ask you to be near me? At least this way you . . . stayed.”

“You never had to _ask me_ ,” Vergil snaps. “I came back from the Underworld for you, didn’t I?”

“ _For me_ ,” Dante repeats, like the idea had never occurred to him before when the truth of it had always been so obvious to Vergil.

Urizen had eaten the Qliphoth fruit. Vergil could’ve stayed in the Underworld, could’ve unearthed Mundus and made him pay, could’ve ruled the place if he so wished—but Dante’s life was here, in the human realm, and Vergil’s life was with _Dante_ , and so he’d discarded his life goal without a second thought.

Because Dante was worth it.

And then everything had gone wrong, and now here they are, the wound Vergil had delivered to his own heart healed for all that it still feels shattered by Dante’s own brokenness.

“Yes, Dante,” he says tiredly. “ _For you_. Because I wanted to be with my brother. But I can’t stay if you ask me to hurt you. Not anymore.”

Dante takes Vergil’s hand in both of his, traces a line on the inside of his palm that Vergil knows corresponds exactly with the scar on Dante’s own left hand. “I won’t,” he promises, low and serious and sincere.

Vergil looks at him. He remembers the good moments; the day Dante took him out and fed him chocolate cake; the hope turning into disappointment over and over again. He should know better now, he should’ve learnt, but he seems to be incorrigible in this one thing in his new life: he doesn’t know how to say _no_ to Dante, not when it truly matters. And so he pushes himself up weakly, reaching for Dante’s shoulder for support.

He nods, and he lies that he believes him; that they will be all right.

Dante kisses him, so very gently, and whispers another promise against his lips, one that Vergil has no doubts is true, “ _I’ll never let you go_.”

And Vergil nods again, because that much, Dante has already proven; Vergil is his, and he’ll stay, for the better or for the worse.

(But Dante _is_ his, too, and he promised now what he had never promised before. Vergil’s demon, shockingly, relaxes in his soul.)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic also has a [twitter post](https://twitter.com/tonytears/status/1151278988280631297?s=19) if you want to share it.


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